Brian Johnston dal sito del Sidney Morning Herald esamina lo stato del turismo in Italia dal punto di vista del turista, arrivando alla scontata conclusione di come sia mal gestito il nostro “petrolio”.

Last month in Venice I spent three hours sitting in a plane on the tarmac. The airport of one of the world’s most-visited cities didn’t have enough staff to load baggage.  Worse, passengers had spent a previous hour packed into a corridor waiting for a bus to take us to the plane because there weren’t enough drivers, either. But no one told us that. When an irate passenger demanded an explanation, an airline rep simply turned her back.

Il problema sembra essere l’Italia stessa:

The real problem is Italy itself. Observant visitors can easily spot what academic studies confirm: Italy has poor tourism infrastructure, poorly managed tourism businesses, and inadequate tourism policy and planning. Politicians are uninterested in addressing the problems of an industry that accounts for over a 10th of GDP.

Recentemente The Guardian ha affrontato in un pezzo di Tobias Jones il difficile rapporto tra il nostro paese e il turismo di massa.

The problem is that mass tourism is turning destinations into the opposite of what they once were. The attraction of the Cinque Terre is their stunning simplicity: they have no great monuments as such, neither grand cathedrals nor castles, just a sense of serenity, of human ingenuity and topographical grandeur (the steep mountains, terraced and criss-crossed by paths where possible, host pastel houses perched above an azure sea). But the serenity and simplicity can’t survive millions of wham-bam visitors a year. Two weeks ago, Fabrizia Pecunia, the mayor of one of the five villages, Riomaggiore, complained: “It’s no longer possible to postpone the debate about how to handle tourist flows. If we don’t [find a solution], our days as a tourist destination are numbered.” What tourist hot spots most yearned for a decade or two ago – high numbers, influx and flows – is precisely what is now causing them problems. During the peak season, the Balearic island of Mallorca now has more than 1,000 flights landing every day.

E Rebecca Jennings su Vox narra come Positano sia il posto più spiacevole dove sia mai stata.

Positano is blessed with a mild Mediterranean climate and a proximity to luxury and wealth; it is home to one of the most famous and majestic hotels in the world and provided the backdrop for Diane Lane’s whirlwind romance in Under the Tuscan Sun. Twenty years later, the town has become synonymous with the grandest of influencer travelscapes, clogging Instagram with photos of beautiful people on boats, staring back in wonder at the skyline behind them.
Nor is it really the fault of the crowds, though like seemingly everywhere else in Italy, they are rampant and inescapable and at times contribute to a sense of claustrophobic doom so great that the only way out is divorcing yourself from your body and disassociating until you finally reach open air. Rather, what’s most disturbing about being in Positano is the knowledge that you have been suckered, and the realization that just because you have the means to go somewhere does not mean that you are owed anything more than the experiential equivalent of flying Basic Economy.

In questi giorni anche Rob LeDonne sulle pagine de l’Observer mette il nostro paese sotto la lente e racconta come sia attrattiva l’Italia, oggetto di un vero e proprio boom di viaggi estivi spinto dall’ambientazione siciliana della seconda stagione della serie di Mike White, prodotta da HBO, White Lotus.

Nearly seven decades after Hepburn lived la dolce vita, Jennifer Coolidge provided a similar cultural lightning rod, in the form of her role as Tanya McQuoid on The White Lotus. The show, which headed to Sicily for its second season, reminded everybody what they already knew: if you want to have a fabulous vacation, there’s no better place to do it than in Italy. And it couldn’t come at a better time for a country beleaguered by the lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the irony that the Mike White-created series depicts a tale of spoiled elites who are miserable in even the most picturesque of locations (as well as the fate of some of the show’s most beloved characters), the alluring nature of it all inspired many White Lotus fans to make vacation plans to pack up and head to the land of pasta, pizza and Campari.

Infine, su Insider, una turista americana e TikToker paragona visitare la Costiera Amalfitana a fatiche da lavoro manuale:

“Then you have to stand in 90-degree weather waiting on a ferry — to get on a ferry with all of your luggage,” Jordan continued. She then suggested that the place she was filming from was inaccessible by car and required climbing up 160 stairs to reach.

Recentemente anche il ministro della salute tedesco ha parlato del turismo in Italia e del rischio climatico:

Italian cities “have no long-term future” as tourist destinations because they’re becoming too hot, Germany’s health minister said as he described intense heat while visiting Italy on holiday.

“The heatwave here is spectacular,” the epidemiologist, a member of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), wrote on Twitter at the start of his trip.