A dramatic season is expected for the national tourism sector and above all for wine tourism. Donatella Cinelli Colombini founder of Wine Tourism in Italy, creator of Open Cellars Day, producer of Brunello di Montalcino launches a cry of alarm for companies and workers in this sector. The global tourism crisis - observes Cinelli Colombini - blocks a 1.300 billion business by emptying planes, hotels, restaurants, travel agencies and wineries that lose their best customers
Tourism is the main economic victim of the covid epidemic: one billion four hundred million travelers a year with a world business of around 1.300 billion blocked by fear. Fear of getting on a plane where there may be contagious passengers or of going to hotels or restaurants where the previous traveller, perhaps ill with covid, may have sneezed on blankets or bread baskets…. Reclusion at home has increased the perception of danger compared to everything outside the home for which holidays, rather than moments of escape, appear - he adds - as anxiety-provoking experiences with the coronavirus always lurking around.
Better to avoid? A perspective that the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen expressed with the phrase "do not book next summer's holidays" and that the President of the Istituto Superiore della Sanità Silvio Brusaferro resumed on April 17 "it is too early to think about holidays ”.
In this disastrous 2020, every country will try to keep citizens within their national borders and Italians will probably also make proximity trips. For this reason, tourist destinations where travelers are predominantly Italian will be less affected than regions, such as Tuscany, where arrivals from abroad have very high percentages and Americans are numerous among them (9% of total arrivals). Here a real collapse is taking shape. Let's not forget that foreign tourism is worth over 40 billion for Italy.
The situation in the countryside is more serious where tourism - underlines Donatella Cinelli Clombini - has developed in recent years in the form of agritourism and food and wine tourism. In these areas, for example, restaurants do not have, or have very few, local customers and, compared to their city colleagues, they cannot use delivery as an alternative. I would not rule out that many decide to stay closed throughout 2020.
In addition to the decrease in tourist flows, there is in fact another aspect to consider: the effects of any contagion where, for now, the coronavirus epidemic has been almost absent. Let's examine the most problematic tourist activities, those of farms - accommodation, catering and wine tourism - which are ancillary and often in promiscuity with properly agricultural work. Bringing visitors to the company increases the number of protective measures to be taken in the company as a whole, but above all it increases the probability of contracting covid. In such an eventuality, the quarantine obligation could concern both those who work in hospitality and the staff of cellars, offices, vineyards and other typically rural activities, with the total blockage of all production.
For food and wine tourism destinations that have grown by double digits in recent years, driving the recovery of tourism in Italy, the near future appears very worrying. The classic Chianti, the Langhe, the Valpolicella …. they have built an authentic economic system on the attraction of wine with hotels and farmhouses, restaurants, wine bars, cellars open to the public for visits, tastings and direct sales.
To restrict the examination of the tourism problems created by the coronavirus to wineries alone, it is conceivable that the 25.000 Italian wineries open to the public, and among them the 5-8.000 well organized for hospitality, employ around 30.000 seasonal employees in charge of the wine tourism, as well as permanent staff and members of the producing families. All people who could be out of work.
If we look at the economic repercussions of the lack of direct sales in the cellars, we have equally discouraging data: 2-2,5 billion euros which constitute an important liquidity for Italian companies but above all a source of income with significantly higher margins than normal commercial channels.
As Roberta Garibaldi clearly pointed out in her Reports on food and wine tourism in Italy and the Cities of Wine with the Observatory directed by Professor Giuseppe Festa, wine tourism includes an articulated series of consumptions that only partially concern wineries. It is to be presumed that for the 5 Euro spent in the purchase of bottles, the visitor pays another XNUMX in the wine areas to eat, sleep, shop for traditional specialties or participate in events, courses, tastings and other entertainment opportunities.
According to data from the Bank of Italy (2019) foreign tourists in Italy spend 12 billion a year on food and wine consumed with meals or purchased as a sweet tooth. An authentic driving force for restaurants and shops in all tourist cities. An engine that is off today and will also slow down those who supplied these places of consumption and sale, i.e. the wineries and producers of excellent food specialities. Let's not forget that until last year half of the 58 million foreign tourists in Italy had bought at least one bottle of wine.
