Italian tourism workers have different assessments of the results of the summer season

Daniela Santanche believed that those who “cry out snakes and frogs” are wrong, as tourism in Italy is performing excellently.

The Minister without portfolio responsible for tourism stressed that the final figures for the long summer season, which began in April, will be summed up in October, but it is enough to look at Sicily, where the number of visitors increased by more than 45 percent in April and May alone compared to last year.

Marzia Marzoli, the president of the Italian beach operators’ union (Sib), sees the situation differently, reporting to the daily Corriere della Sera a 20 percent drop in July and a 10 percent drop in August, even though August is traditionally the peak season for Italian beaches.

Mauro Maurelli, president of the Federbalneari beach association, said there was no crisis: “Italians’ vacation habits have changed, we need to diversify the offer,” he said.

“There has been no cultural shift, it is not true that Italians no longer want to go to the sea, they simply don’t have the money to do so,” responded Domenico Pellegrino, president of Aidit, a travel agency group.

According to summer surveys, twenty-five percent of Italians could not afford a vacation. Fifty-eight percent of vacationers chose domestic destinations. Fifty-four percent of Italians allowed themselves a vacation of between three and five days.

On the beaches, the price of two sunbeds and a parasol ranged between 25 and 35 euros during the week, reaching fifty euros at the weekend, with large differences between different parts of the country. There were beaches where prices had increased by one hundred percent compared to last year.