Holiday hell instead of a postcard idyll: on some days hardly anything works in the narrow streets of the small towns along the Amalfi Coast. Tourists crowd shoulder to shoulder and streets are completely blocked. Now the region is calling for drastic measures.
The culprits have already been identified by the locals: Cruiseswhich literally flood the towns in the south of the Italian peninsula from Sorrento (Campania region) with day-trippers. If the residents have their way, this will soon come to an end.
Why cruises are becoming a problem
The region cannot handle so many people, says Salvatore Gagliano, politician and owner of the Grand Hotel Tritone in the small coastal village of Praiano (population just under 1,950), to the British “Telegraph”. And further: “We need a regulation to prohibit passengers from leaving the cruise ships and coming ashore.”
The holidaymakers on the Amalfi Coast in Italy are now joined by day guests from cruise ships
His accusation: The cruise travelers, who are decried as “eat-and-go tourists,” usually just want to quickly buy a few cheap souvenirs and then disappear back to the sea shipswithout spending a lot of money. The problem: Given the crowds of visitors, hotel guests often no longer feel like leaving their accommodation. The reputation of the coastal region as a natural beauty with the appeal of the Italian lifestyle “la dolce vita” (German: the sweet life) is at stake.
Mass tourism is taking over
Over the years, the Amalfi Coast has become an increasingly popular destination for international cruise ships. There are similar problems in nearby regions: On one weekend, the coast guard registered more than 28,000 passengers on the island of Ischias (around 67,500 inhabitants), just 50 kilometers away as the crow flies, who came from their ships to the volcanic island in the Gulf of Naples within 48 hours. Politicians are trying to appease. They say they are working on solutions – but the options are limited. Representatives from several of them met last year vacation spots to a crisis summit. But nothing has changed.
Anger at cruise vacationers is growing. Last month there was an escalation in France: Fishermen blocked cruise ships off Corsica so that tourists cannot go ashore.
What speaks against a ban
The world’s largest trade association for the cruise industry, the “Cruise Lines International Association”, also argues with powerful economic figures: the cruise industry contributes 7.3 billion euros to Italy’s gross domestic product annually and secures more than 100,000 jobs.