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TOURISM

Developers want to build a giant Ferris wheel next to Pompeii

UPDATED: Italy's culture minister has vowed to stop plans to build the 'Wheel of Pompeii', a giant Ferris wheel that would tower over one of Italy's most precious archaeological sites.

Published: 28 March 2019 13:55 CET
Updated: 28 March 2019 15:55 CET
Developers want to build a giant Ferris wheel next to Pompeii
The Great Theatre of Pompeii, near where developers plan to install a giant Ferris wheel this summer. Photo: Mario Laporta/AFP

Work has already begun on the fairground ride, according to the German company that is installing it in the car park of a local supermarket, a few hundred metres from the ruins of Pompeii's ancient theatres.

The 60-metre wheel will allow visitors to “admire the whole panorama of the ancient city of Pompeii, Mount Vesuvius and the whole Gulf of Naples”, the promoters say.

The wheel is planned to open to the public on May 8th and operate for at least five months, according to local press reports, though a spokesperson for the mayor's office told The Times that “we need to run checks [over] a month before we give planning permission”.

Outcry over the project, which has been in progress for several months but only came to national attention this week, prompted Italy's culture minister to pledge to put the kibosh on the whole thing. 

“A Ferris wheel in front of Pompeii? We're not even discussing it. We haven't received any such proposal, but if we do we'll send it straight back,” Alberto Bonisoli tweeted on Thursday.

But photos of the site suggest that installation is already well underway, despite objections.

The wheel violates “the cultural values of the archaeological area” as well as intruding on a buffer zone set up around the site to protect the fragile excavations, the president of Italy's Cultural Heritage Observatory, Antonio Irlando, told the Corriere della Sera.


The wheel under construction just outside the Pompeii archaeological site. Photo: Wheel of Pompeii/Facebook

The archaeological site itself, which belongs to the Italian state, said that it had not been informed of the plan and has requested more information from the local council, the Corriere reported.

The contract to build the Ferris wheel, worth some €4 million, was signed in 2018 and gives the operators the option to run the ride both this summer and in 2020, they told the German press last year. 

With 42 cabins carrying up to eight people each on a ride of ten minutes, the wheel would have a potential capacity of 1,200 passengers every hour. The operators plan to charge less than €10 per ticket, with discounts offered for locals.

“We see it as another attraction at an attraction, not as a funfair,” said Gunter Boos, the German developer responsible for the Ferris wheel.

Pompeii is already drawing more visitors than ever before, with numbers climbing to around 3.5 million per year. With excavations continuing to turn up exciting new discoveries, the sprawling site is one of Italy's most visited – and most fragile – attractions. 

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Photo: Mario Laporta/AFP
 

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TRAVEL NEWS

Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Almost 800,000 fewer UK holidaymakers have visited Spain in 2023 when compared to 2019. What’s behind this big drop?

Published: 23 August 2023 11:36 CEST
Updated: 26 August 2023 18:32 CEST
Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Spain welcomed 12.2 million UK tourists between January and July 2023, 6 percent less when compared to the same period in 2019, according to data released on Monday by Spanish tourism association Turespaña.

This represents a decrease of 793,260 British holidaymakers for Spain so far this year.

Conversely, the number of Italian (+8 percent), Irish (+15.3 percent), Portuguese (+24.8 percent), Dutch (+4 percent) and French tourists (+5 percent) visiting España in 2023 are all above the rates in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. 

German holidaymakers are together with their British counterparts the two main nationalities showing less interest in coming to Spanish shores.

Britons still represent the biggest tourist group that comes to Spain, but it’s undergoing a slump, with another recent study by Caixabank Research suggesting numbers fell particularly in June 2023 (-12.5 percent of the usual rate). 

READ ALSO: Spain fully booked for summer despite most expensive holiday prices ever

So are some Britons falling out of love with Spain? Are there clear reasons why a holiday on the Spanish coast is on fewer British holiday itineraries?

According to Caixabank Research’s report, the main reasons are “the poor macroeconomic performance of the United Kingdom, the sharp rise in rates and the weakness of the pound”.

This is evidenced in the results of a survey by British market research company Savanta, which found that one in six Britons are not going on a summer holiday this year due to the UK’s cost-of-living crisis.

Practically everything, everywhere has become more expensive, and that includes holidays in Spain: hotel stays are up 44 percent, eating out is 13 percent pricier, and flights are 40 percent more on average. 

READ ALSO: How much more expensive is it to holiday in Spain this summer?

Caixabank stressed that another reason for the drop in British holidaymakers heading to Spain is that those who can afford a holiday abroad are choosing “more competitive markets” such as Turkey, Greece and Portugal. 

And there’s no doubt that the insufferably hot summer that Spain is having, with four heatwaves so far, has also dissuaded many holidaymakers from Blighty from overcooking in the Spanish sun. 

With headlines such as “This area of Spain could become too hot for tourists” or “tourists say it’s too hot to see any sights” featuring in the UK press, budding British holidaymakers are all too aware of the suffocating weather conditions Spain and other Mediterranean countries are enduring. 

Other UK outlets have urged travellers to try out the cooler Spanish north rather than the usual piping hot Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol destinations.

Another UK poll by InsureandGo found that 71 percent of the 2,000+ British respondents thought that parts of Europe such as Spain, Greece and Turkey will be too hot to visit over summer by 2027.

There’s further concern that the introduction in 2024 of the new (and delayed) ETIAS visa for non-EU visitors, which of course now also applies to UK nationals, could further compel British tourists to choose countries to holiday in rather than Spain.

READ MORE: Will British tourists need to pay for a visa waiver to enter Spain?

However, a drop in the number of British holidaymakers may not be all that bad for Spain, even though they did spend over €17 billion on their Spanish vacations in 2022. 

Towns, cities and islands across the country have been grappling with the problem of overtourism and the consequences it has on everything from quality of life for locals to rent prices. 

READ ALSO: ‘Beach closed’ – Fake signs put up in Spain’s Mallorca to dissuade tourists

The overcrowded nature of Spain’s beaches and most beautiful holiday hotspots appears to be one of the reasons why Germans are visiting Spain in far fewer numbers. A recent report in the country’s most read magazine Stern asked “if the dream is over” in their beloved Mallorca.

Spanish authorities are also seeking to overhaul the cheaper holiday package-driven model that dominates many resorts, which includes moving away from the boozy antics of young British and other European revellers.

Fewer tourists who spend more are what Spain is theoretically now looking for, and the rise in American, Japanese and European tourists other than Brits signify less of a dependence on the British market, one which tends to maintain the country’s tourism status quo for better or for worse.

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