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TOURISM

Italy’s biggest cruise companies won’t be stopping in Venice this summer

Neither MSC Cruises nor Costa Crociere plan to sail their giant liners to Venice as they resume operations this summer after a six-month shutdown.

Published: 12 August 2020 13:25 CEST
Italy's biggest cruise companies won't be stopping in Venice this summer
The two biggest cruise operators in Italy have not announced plans to resume sailing from Venice this summer. Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP

Instead the companies are planning departures from the port of Trieste, around two hours north-east of Venice, and Genoa on the north-west coast.

Italy's government has given the go-ahead for cruises to restart from August 15th, though operators must stick to European routes in line with a ban on tourism from outside the EU.

READ ALSO: Face masks remain and cruise ships return: What's in Italy's new emergency decree?

And while Venice is typically a highlight of Italian cruises, receiving more than a million passengers a year, as sailing resumes it doesn't look set be the starting point, destination or even a stopover for ships operated by Italy's two biggest cruise companies.

The news has been hailed as a victory by anti-cruise campaigners in Venice, but it's not yet clear why operators are steering clear, or how long they'll stay away.


Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP

The MSC Grandiosa will be the first liner to sail after ports reopen, leaving from Genoa for Malta with stops in Rome, Naples and Palermo. It's one of two Mediterranean routes the company has confirmed, the other departing from Trieste towards Greece and returning to Bari – without stopping in Venice.

Meanwhile Costa Crociere says its cruises will resume in September, starting with a weekly cruise from Trieste to Greece and followed by another route from Genoa to Malta.

The company did not directly answer The Local's questions about whether it would return to Venice, but in an emailed statement it said that it would announced further details of its itineraries in the coming days. All other routes are suspended until September 30th, 2020, it said.

MSC had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing. Earlier this month the company said that passengers departing from Trieste would be offered the chance to visit Venice by train.

READ ALSO: 

Anti-cruise ship activists had threatened to prevent liners returning to Venice by any means possible, including blocking the port with boats or even acts of sabotage. 

“We said it, we promised it and so it will be: no ships will enter the lagoon for the entire season,” declared campaign group Comitato NoGrandiNavi on Monday. “No company has the strength to defy our blockade against the return of these ships that are useless, harmful and unsustainable in every respect!”

The group was organizing a rally at the port on Friday to celebrate what it called “the expulsion of big ships from Venice”, which it said it wanted to see gone from the lagoon for good.


A protester calls for cruise ships to be banned from Venice. Photo: Andrea Pattaro/AFP

Residents have long complained that giant cruise ships cause environmental damage and flood Venice with day-trippers, who are less valuable to the local economy than visitors paying to stay overnight.

Before the pandemic the city council planned to start charging day-trippers an entry fee in summer 2020, which would have ranged from €3 to €10 at peak times.

But port workers protested this week calling for liners to return. They blamed the operators' decision to skip Venice both on anti-cruise activists but also the local government, which they said had failed to provide companies with clear options to return. 

In a statement, the workers said they supported calls to reroute cruises away from St Mark's Square in the historic centre, but that banning cruises from Venice altogether would put 4,000 jobs at risk.

In response, Comitato NoGrandiNavi called for “a new development model for the city and for jobs” to replace mass tourism while protecting residents and workers.

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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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