ROME, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- Another mostly tourist-free month -- now, in August, the highest of the high tourist season in Italy -- is bringing the economies of the country's most popular tourist cities "to their knees," according to sector analysts.
August is the most popular vacation month in Europe, a time when Italians usually head to the country's beaches and mountains and tourists from across Europe and farther afield head to Italy. But not this year.
The coronavirus pandemic started having a negative impact on Italy's massive tourism industry even before the country instituted its national lockdown in early March. Hotel owners and tour operators reported a wave of cancellations starting in late February when reports showed the country's first coronavirus infections in northern Italy.
Italy started to ease the lockdown measures in early May and by early June it opened its borders to foreign tourists from a few countries, gradually adding new countries to the list as the weeks went by.
But by Italian standards, few tourists arrived. Some hotels and restaurants opened and then closed again due to a lack of business. Most tour operators remain shuttered.
The silence from the lack of tourists has never been more noticeable than it has been in August.
"A year ago, we hired three new guides just for August and we still had to turn some people away," Pietro Barsotti, manager and co-founder of Eternal City Tours in Rome, told Xinhua. "This year we've gone from 15 guides speaking the main European languages and even Chinese, Japanese, and Russian, to just two now, me and one other person. Since we reopened five weeks ago there are three or four days a week when we don't have anything to do."
Barsotti said the pain from a lack of tourists in August is especially frustrating since the month usually represented the peak month before things began to scale down.
"The general concept is that companies operating in the tourism sector do more than half their business in the four months between mid-May and mid-September," he said. "August is our last chance to make something out of this year, but it isn't happening."
All told, the pandemic will have cost the country's five largest tourist cities -- Rome, Venice, Florence, Turin, and Milan -- as many as 34 million tourist arrivals this year, according to data from Confesercenti, an industry group.
"The absence of foreign tourists is bringing the economies of these cities to their knees," Confesercenti said in a recent research report.
Angelo Sferra, manager of MFS marketing, which helps promote hotels and other tourist destinations, said the country's economic and tourism problems create a vicious circle.
"A hotel or restaurant, for example, won't open if it doesn't think it will have customers and it won't get any customers until it's already open," Sferra said in an interview.
The few tourists who are seen on the streets of the major tourist cities are often drawn by the unusual nature of this tourist season, according to interviews with Xinhua.
"I would never consider coming to Rome during August because it's so crowded," said Marco Ancelotti, a municipal worker for the city of Monza, near Milan in northern Italy, in an interview. He echoed the views of the small number of other travelers from around Italy and other parts of Europe. "I figured this was my one chance to the city without the crowds."
Another research paper, this one from the consultancy Deloitte, said that for Italy's tourist sector to recover over time, the government must take steps now.
"Italy must make travelers feel safe and it must invest in innovative forms of tourism that leverage the Made-in-Italy brand to enhance its economic power," Deloitte's Andrea Poggi wrote in the paper. Enditem
