Italian hoteliers have strongly denounced the injustice of the measures decided by the government at a time when the restrictions are benefiting their competitors, especially Spain.
Through appeals and complaints at the level of their Federation, Italian hoteliers have expressed their dissatisfaction with measures decided by the authorities which seem illogical to them.
Hoteliers fail to understand how authorities allow Italians to travel abroad in times of health crisis while preventing the country’s domestic tourism by banning travel within the country.
In an interview with Corriere della Sera, the president of the Federation of Italian hoteliers, Federalberghi, Bernabo Bocca, denounced “a gift” that the Italian authorities are giving to foreign countries by allowing citizens to do tourism elsewhere and national tourism which is slowly dying.
“Tourists go elsewhere, we give away our tourists abroad”, he said indignantly explaining that hoteliers have the impression “that they are being made fun of”.
“The rules must be respected, but they must be the same for everyone”, he added (…) otherwise we kill Italian tourism ”, referring to the indications of movement restrictions in force in the peninsula.
“I cannot leave my town, but I can fly to the Canaries, it’s absurd” while “85% of hotels in Italy are forced to remain closed”, he denounced.
While travel outside the municipalities is not authorized, travel to the country’s airports has been authorized by the Ministry of the Interior.
These trips to airports are of course intended for trips outside the country, in Europe in particular, where EU countries have agreed to leave their borders open between members.
To travel abroad, “just take a Covid test on departure and return (…) and other countries benefit from it. It seems that Spain is saying + come to us + and Greece has been preparing for the summer for months, ”said Mr Bocca.
In Italy, “we had offered Covid tests in hotels on arrival and departure, but this was refused,” he further denounced.
Italian hoteliers are worried that their next summer season will be as low as in 2020 as European governments speed up vaccinations so they can ease restrictive measures.
While in 2019 tourism in Italy, the 5th most popular destination in the world, had revenues of 44.3 billion euros, in 2020, revenues reached only 17.45 billion euros, according to the world Bank
