According to the last ISTAT report there are about 52 thousand enterprises working in the tourist industry in Italy, with roughly 283,000 employees achieving a total of € 25.6 billion of turnover. In addition, Italy ranks first in Europe for its number of tourist establishments with about 33,000 hotels and 183,000 of accommodation establishments of other types.
COVID has had an enormous impact on this sector. The expected number of visitors in the lockdown period from March to May was 81 million tourist visits (inclusive of 23% of the annual total of foreign visitors). AIGO, a marketing agency specialised in tourism, has revealed in a recent analysis that 47% of tourist cancelled their reservations in Italy causing an estimated 9.4 billion euros loss of income. There is also a wide spread uncertainty (referred by 58% of potential tourists) when deciding on future holiday reservations since there is no clear data on how the epidemiologic situation may develop. Consumers are considering other types of tourist accommodations and, above all, other destinations (44% of tourists reported this option as very probable and 46% as rather probable).
Various measures have been introduced to deal with the situation. Apart from measures to ensure income support for tourism workers, the Italian government introduced a holiday voucher for families (from € 150 to € 500, depending on the income) which may be used to discount the accommodation bill or be deducted from the tax bill for the financial year (up to a maximum of 20% of the bonus). Besides, tax exemptions have been foreseen, e.g. municipality tax (IMU) exemptions for tourism sector and concession taxes exemptions. Other measures are aimed at helping cultural enterprises and institutions by directly compensating damages deriving from cancellation of cultural events and by setting up funds for the promotion of travelling and tourism in Italy. The Friuli Venezia Giulia region is planning a non-repayable contribution to help recover from COVID-19 emergency by covering rental charges. Tourist accommodation providers, travel agencies and tour operators are among the beneficiaries of this help.
Sustainable tourism appears to be one of the key concepts, even in our region, when defining the strategy for tourism recovery. The enhancement of an area is strongly connected with the promotion of its natural and cultural assets by developing elements like networks of pedestrian and bicycle paths, UNESCO sites, zero km food products. In tourism, sustainability stands for greater attention to environmental impact, better use of natural resources and waste management. Institutions involved in tourism play an important role in elaborating and promoting sustainable tourism products, taking into account the new type of tourist services user in the post Covid-19 times. Tourist operators believe that the institutional contribution is very important, primarily in order to provide accurate data and information on health situation and rules of behaviour. Starting from this base, institutions and operators can work together to produce effective marketing campaigns targeted at, partly new, consumers, using social and digital channels and thus making consumers more likely to book.
Author: Michele Crosatto (Aries Scarl)
Operation co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund
