Even though Italy has had its border open to the EU/Schengen area since the beginning of June, there are still no tourists in the country.
This was stated by the head of the Italian tourism industry organization Federturismo, Marina Lalli, during a press conference with international media on Wednesday, reports the German Welt, among others.
”It's not like we don't see a significant number of tourists, we just don't see any tourists at all,” she stated.
There is a lack of foreign tourists and she does not believe they will start returning to Italy until September/October. Germans and Austrians in particular are likely to come, given the relatively easy opportunities for them to travel south to their EU partner.
However, tourists from, for example, China and the United States are banned indefinitely, which will hit cities like Florence, Rome and Venice hard, according to the head of Federturismo.
Italian families with incomes of less than 40,000 euros can apply for a voucher of 500 euros for domestic travel. An absolute majority of Italians are expected to stay at home this summer. Of the approximately 60 million inhabitants in the country, just over half are expected to go on at least short trips within Italy this summer, according to a survey by the research institute Ixe, according to the Austrian Kurirer.
Nordea highlighted in an analysis this spring that tourism accounts for 13 to 15 percent of GDP in Spain and Italy, compared to less than 10 percent in countries such as Sweden and Germany.
The majority of southern European countries' tourism revenues come during the summer, Andreas Steno Larsen, chief strategist at Nordea, added to the Direkt news agency. A lack of summer tourism could therefore mean several percentage points in lost GDP for southern European countries, in addition to the economic costs of the recent months of lockdown. Without a significant tourist season this summer, the deficits of these already indebted countries risk being even higher than forecasters have estimated, he feared.
Source: news agency direct
