Tourism, Florence Confartigianato reassures: “Back to pre-Covid levels”
The year ends well definitive recovery of tourist flows. The first 9 months recorded around 174 million presences of Italian customers and 164 million foreigners, albeit down compared to 2019 (Istat); in the month of December, inaugurated by a good 75% of the structures booked for the All Saints long weekend, the decisive sprint for recovery, as evidenced by the strong recovery of airline reservations to Italy between Italy and Epiphany, 274 thousand (+57.3% on the same period last year), calculates Enit. “We have peacefully returned to pre-Covid levels”, is the feedback in the field of Irene Floris, co-owner of CG Travel and president of Confartigianato tourism.
There are also many Florentines who have chosen to experience a holiday relying on the professionalism of travel agencies. “At Christmas we opted for nearest destinations: the cities of art, Venice and Rome above all, and then the mountains, both in the Apennines and in the Alps, which are increasingly in demand”. For the New Year, however, the foreign are the most popular: “The choice falls on Egypt, with a cruise on the Nile and the Red Sea, and Jordan, both foreign destinations but reachable with a few hours of flight”. “I younger – explains Floris again – they asked me to plan New Year’s Eve with more long-haul destinations such as South East Asia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines”. To favor the recovery, according to Floris, also i flight prices that “they are higher than in 2019 but much less than last summer”; to complicate everything remains the bureaucratic problem: “Find an appointment for passport renewal, commissioned by our customers, it has become really difficult. Long times that add up to the two weeks for the release. Sometimes it even goes as far as two months”.