Tourists in Italy are behaving badly this year. Here’s why: The tourist industry is on life support, and Italian businesses are on life support.
The Italian vacation is the perfect time to visit. There’s nothing better about the sunny and beautiful Mediterranean coast in winter than spring. And Italy, with its rich, storied history, is as beautiful and exotic as you’ll find anywhere. So why then has tourism been on life support? Why is tourism at, or near, a standstill in Italy? The Italian government needs to do two things: First, it needs to bring more tourists back to Italy in the spring, as they used to do in the early 2000s when the spring season began, instead of falling off the tourist market after the weather gets hot in the summer. Second, it needs to create a sustainable tourism industry that can be run on the same scale as that of the United States, which can support both high volume tourists and a vibrant local economy.
The problem is the same everywhere. Italy’s tourism industry is on life support, and Italy’s economic environment is not conducive to growing that industry. Italian tourism is on the verge of being a ghost town.
In the past 15 years, the Italian economy has contracted 11.5 percent. It’s even worse than the European economy, and in other parts of Europe, tourism has been in free fall as well. In France, tourism has actually been on life support since the European recession struck in 2008. France recently reported its slowest first quarter in the last decade. Its tourism industry has been shrinking by more than 25 percent since 2006. Last year only about one-third of French tourists came to enjoy France’s beautiful coast and culture, and only about half of those tourist dollars were spent in France.
Italy’s tourism industry has been in free fall since the global recession.
In Spain, in the 1990s, tourism was growing at an annual rate of 3 to 4 percent before the global crash. Then tourism fell off a cliff and it now is about 60.7 percent lower than it was in 1990. In Greece, the tourism industry is 50 percent smaller since the 2000s. Tourism in Greece is down by about 75 percent. At the same time, tourism in Turkey is up by 60 percent, Germany by 60 percent, and Spain by 80 percent. Spain is
