COVID TOURISM AND ITALY: a disaster that can have major macroeconomic repercussions
Although the MEF, or rather the head of the MEF, spoke of "Resumption in August, because some seaside resorts had sold out, the tourism situation in Italy is more than dramatic, AGI draws it quite well in one of its articles .
If it is true that, fortunately, the number of Italians who have made holidays in the country has increased a little (+ 1.1%), a minimum increase due to the constraints of many economic sectors, the decline in foreigners was worse than expectations (-65.9%). This is the result of a research conducted by Cst Firenze for Assoturismo Confesercenti, based on data provided by a sample of 1,975 tourism entrepreneurs throughout the country. The cities of art (-49.6%) and lakes (-48.6%) were particularly affected; the mountains (-19%) and the sea (-23.7%) resist. After all, the Italians on the one hand are a little allergic to cities of art, perhaps there have already been more flights.
The North East is very affected (-34.4%) and Venice is deserted, while the South holds better (-20.4%). “The slight recovery of the Italian market in August is not enough to save the summer of 2020, which remains a season to forget for tourism”, explains a note. "In the June-August quarter, presences in official accommodation facilities in Italy stopped at 148.5 million, over 65 million less than in 2019 (-30.4%), with a stronger decline in the hotel sector (-32 , 6%) compared to non-hotel accommodation (-27.5%) "
From the point of view of turnover, companies report a significant drop in volumes, estimated on average at 37.5% compared to the same period of 2019 , (-38.7% for hotels and -33.8% for non-hotel accommodation). Approximately 40 thousand accommodation facilities are estimated to have adhered to the support measure adopted by the Bonus Vacanza government, of which 73% in the non-hotel sector.
Fortunately, "August shows signs of a robust rebound", as our garrulous Minister of Economy Gualtieri said, because if there was no recovery, who knows what happened. The problem is that the failure of the tourism sector also leads to a further imbalance in the current account: fewer tourists mean less financial flows and therefore also less money coming in from abroad, since the missing visitors are all from foreign countries. this puts our current account in negative. The phenomenon was calculated by the IMF:
The impact of Covid-19 on the current account balance in Italy is very strong. This, in a normal situation, would lead to a devaluation of our currency, perhaps even temporarily, which would rebalance everything, but we do not have a flexible exchange rate, as they are in the magnificent world of the euro this does not happen. If we consider the sectoral balances, these will have repercussions, as has happened, in an increase in private savings, which will certainly not relaunch the economy.
Another sign that the good Gualtieri is an excellent ethnic guitarist, and a bad minister.
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The article COVID TOURISM AND ITALY: a disaster that can have major macroeconomic consequences comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/turismo-covid-ed-italia-un-disastro-che-puo-avere-delle-grosse-rispercussioni-macoreconomiche/ on Sat, 05 Sep 2020 15:18:59 +0000.