Summer Holidays: Italy is ready to welcome tourists while the UK hesitates
“Italy is ready to welcome back the world”, these are the words pronounced by the Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi after the G20 Ministerial Tourism Meeting last week. On the other side, a very hesitant Boris Johnson warned that “we have got to be cautious, and we have got to be sensible, and we have got to make sure that we don’t see the virus coming back in”.
The different approaches on international travel, employed by the two Prime Ministers, shed a light on the economic and cultural differences between the two countries. While the UK is slowly monitoring the situation to allow Britons to enjoy their holidays abroad, the Italian government is opening its borders in the desperate attempt to save its economy. The British vaccination rollout is much faster than in Italy. Nevertheless, the UK can afford to be more cautious as it does not mainly rely on tourism, whereas Italy’s tourism industry accounts for about 14% of the Italian GDP.
The UK is supposed to ease the restrictions on international travel from Monday the 17th of May, the day that will mark a potential opening-up after several months of lockdown. One month ago, the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said that Britons could “start to think” about booking foreign summer holidays. Good news for all the British citizens wanting to visit their loved ones abroad and for all those looking forward to travelling after Covid.
However, in recent days, Boris Johnson has reiterated that “it’s important to be cautious”. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus told the government to “discourage all international leisure travel”, the main concern being the threat of further Covid-19 variants and the risk of a new wave. On its part, the UK can say to have experienced on its own skin the price of being too reckless: in January, following the spreading of the English variant, the country has registered one of the highest pandemic mortality rates. “I don’t think that the people of this country want to see an influx of disease from anywhere else. I certainly don’t and we have got to be very, very tough”, said Boris Johnson. After several difficult months, the UK government is doing its best to be cautious regarding the opening of borders: as of now, there is a £5,000 fine for people trying to leave the country without an essential reason. These decisions are also taken considered the slow vaccination campaign in the rest of the world. Concerned British politicians -the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer among others- claimed that “it’s clear that the virus is increasing in some countries around the world, so we have to be very, very careful”. Yet, a very pleasant summer is awaiting Britons at home: indeed, domestically speaking, the UK has been successful in the easing of restrictions with pubs, restaurants, schools, and universities finally open.
On the other side of the channel, Italy is taking a different approach to allow the recovery of the tourism industry that has been badly damaged by the pandemic. “Our mountains, our beaches, our cities and our countryside are reopening. And this process will speed up in the coming weeks and months”, insisted Mario Draghi at the G20 Meeting. “Book your holidays in Italy, we can’t wait to welcome you again”, continued the Prime Minister. While waiting for the EU to introduce a green pass to facilitate foreign travel, Draghi approved the implementation of a green national pass: “thanks to the Italian pass, tourists will be able to move from one country to another without quarantining, as long as they can prove that they have either recovered from Covid-19, been vaccinated or have proof of a negative test result”. From mid-May, the Italian government is expected to remove self-isolation upon arrival measures for Italians entering the country from abroad as well as for tourists coming from the EU, the US and Israel. This would be necessary to face the millions of tourists that have already booked their holidays in Italy, mainly from the United Kingdom and the United States, as reported by the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera.
By Sofia Gerace.
