Italy is full of tourists, which is unbearable for some small towns. However, the income is good for the country’s economy.

“We used to travel in unpleasant circumstances, but we vowed to do so in order to open up to the world, learn about other cultures, and discover the vastness of the world ourselves,” the Londoner meditated. guardian The reporter who now noted that “today there is no danger in travel, but the ego of the tourist has grown enormously:

Traces of the past now only provide the background for many selfies.”

Open to meraviglia, that is, open to wonders – this peculiar English-Italian phrase is the tourist office Advertising campaign It is a slogan that many in Italy are already criticizing. Known from a painting by Sandro Botticelli – in the campaign, for example, the person taking a selfie in Piazza San Marco, riding a bike next to the Colosseum in Rome – Under Venus, this sentence invites tourists from the world to Italy, who of course happily receive selfies next to famous photo. The cost of this advertising campaign is 9 million euros, but many people are wondering: why is this necessary, if there are really too many tourists?

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The answer, of course, is very simple: tourism accounts for an ever-increasing share of GDP in Italy, which has felt its lack of tourists a lot during the pandemic. Tourism currently accounts for 13% of the national GDP, but due to the stagnation of many sectors of the Italian economy, tourism plays an increasingly important role in creating economic balance. Of course, what is good for the country’s economy can be bad for some small towns, where there are simply too many tourists.

Such is the case for Portofino, whose 400 residents can take no further. More than 7,000 tourists flocked to the small town of Liguria for Easter, and that was enough. In the city center, tourists taking selfies simply stopped traffic: pedestrian traffic jams formed. The wise local government wants to pacify the local population by introducing a new form of punishment: a tourist who does not move but stands still and takes a selfie has to pay €275. Elsewhere, they are also strict: in Rome, you are not allowed to sit on the Spanish Steps. In Florence and Venice, it is forbidden to eat on the street in the most crowded places.

The local governments of the affected cities have now turned to the Romanian parliament to pass a law to protect the country’s most visited places from mass tourism.




HVG


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