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TOURISM

More than 15 million Italians are going on holiday in Italy this month

It's officially tourist season in Italy: not just for people arriving from overseas, but for millions of Italian residents choosing to holiday at home this summer.

Published: 5 July 2019 15:03 CEST
More than 15 million Italians are going on holiday in Italy this month
A busy beach in northern Sicily in August 2017. Photo: Ludovico Morin/AFP

Some 17.6 million residents are planning to travel in July, according to a new study by Italian agriculture association Coldiretti, with 86 percent of them choosing to take their vacation in Italy. 

That works out at over 15 million Italian holidaymakers within Italy this month, without even counting the millions more arriving from abroad.

Seventy percent of Italian travellers will be heading to the coast, with the mountains the second most popular choice.

READ ALSO: The ultimate 2019 travel list: Where to go in Italy this year


Photo: DepositPhotos

And while beaches will certainly be crowded and roads busier, there won't necessarily be as much competition for accommodation as you might expect: more than half of Italian holidaymakers plan to stay in private accommodation they or their family and friends already own or rent, Coldiretti said.

While the first weekend of July marks the traditional start of the peak season in Italy, even more people are expected to take off in August.

READ ALSO: 

Over the entire summer from June to September, nearly 32 million Italian residents will go on holiday – 1.3 million more than last year – with 35 percent of them travelling in August, according to separate research by the tourism industry association Confturismo-Confcommercio. 

And 77 percent will stay in Italy, the study said, naming the most popular destinations as Puglia, Sicily, Sardinia and Tuscany. 


Barely room to sit on this Sicilian beach in August. Photo: Ludovico Morin/AFP

While Italy's charms are obvious, they're not the only factor prompting Italians to stay at home this summer: according to Coldiretti, more than one in four resident (26 percent) said that terrorist attacks in other countries had influenced their choice.

Another important consideration was food, which was the top criteria for 19 percent of Italian travellers when choosing a destination, and one of the factors for another 53 percent.

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The net result is that tourists, both domestic and international, are expected to spend at least €8 billion more in Italy this summer than Italian holidaymakers spend abroad – marking a recovery from a poor spring, when unseasonably bad weather prompted many travellers to cancel their trips.

Germans are the single biggest group of inbound tourists to Italy (20 percent), followed by Americans (11 percent), the French (10 percent) and Brits (9 percent). 

More than 60 million travellers are expected to pass through Italian airports between June and August this year, 40 million of them foreigners.

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TRAVEL NEWS

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail operator and the GDL train drivers' union have reached a deal in a wage dispute that has caused months of crippling strikes in the country, the union said.

Published: 26 March 2024 09:55 CET
German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of €420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of €2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some €200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of €2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

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