Feature: Bruised by coronavirus, Italy's tourism sector is planning its comeback

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Xinhua, September 11, 2020
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ROME, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- By any measure, Italy's tourism sector has been ravaged by the global coronavirus outbreak. But analysts said the sector would be able to snap back once the pandemic is over, though it would need reforms to do so.

Italy was among the first European countries to close its borders to tourists, back in early March as part of the country's national coronavirus lockdown. Although it gradually eased those restrictions starting in June, the number of tourist arrivals has been a trickle compared to the levels in previous years.

There is no precise way to measure the scale of the damage to the sector, but there is no doubt it is large: earlier this week, tourism industry groups Confiturismo and Assoturismo released a report estimating that the economic damage to the tourism industry this year could total a staggering 100 billion euros (118 billion U.S. dollars).

If accurate, that figure amounts to more than 6 percent of the country's gross domestic product at the end of last year or more than half of the total economic losses Italy's Ministry of Finance expects the entire economy to suffer for the year as a whole, based on Minister Roberto Gualtieri's estimate that the economy will contract by no more than 10 percent this year.

Will the tourism sector -- from hotel or restaurant owners to tour companies and airlines -- be able to recover from a blow that large?

"The tourism sector is not going to disappear," Annunziata Berrino, a professor of contemporary history at Federico II University in Naples, told Xinhua.

"The country has suffered huge setbacks in the past. Remember that during World War II, four out of five hotels in Naples were destroyed. Not closed, but destroyed. I don't want to minimize the tragedy we are going through, but hotels and restaurants aren't being destroyed."

That doesn't mean the recovery will be quick, Berrino said. She is working on a book called "Nulla Sera' Come Prima" (Nothing Will Be the Same as Before), which is evidence of that view. Even when the pandemic goes away, people will be timid at first about traveling, and the global economic slowdown that accompanied the outbreak means people who do want to travel will have less money to do so.

"We have to be prepared for a different kind of tourism," she said. "We will also have to adapt, to promote a model for sustainable tourism, to call attention to the riches Italy has beyond the great urban centers like Venice, Rome, and Florence."

Mara Manente, director of the International Center for Studies on the Economics of Tourism at Ca' Foscari University in Venice, agreed, noting that Italy has 55 World Heritage sites as defined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, best known as UNESCO. That is equal to the number of sites in China and more than any other country.

"Italy has a great deal to offer tourists but it has to do a better job at promoting certain aspects," Manente said in an interview.

Manente noted that Italy had already begun focusing on sustainability and diversity as part of its national tourism plan for the 2017 to 2022 period. One debate in the field is whether tourism sector strategy should be conducted at the regional level as is the case today, or at the national level, where more aspects can be integrated, which might come at the expense of adapting to local strengths and weaknesses.

"The hope is that during this slow period the reform process will be accelerated," Manente said. "We have to strike the right balance and make the right reforms so that when the tourists start to return in larger numbers, we'll be ready." Enditem

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