A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #462 - Caro vacanze all'italiana (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In this troubled summer, despite the wars, the favorite topic seems to 
be the palpable crisis afflicting the Italian tourism sector. ---- 
Taking a step back, we find ourselves in May, on International Workers' 
Day, when in Naples it was reported that the Monache beach was literally 
invaded by an impressive number of people, crammed there to spend a 
different day in the small "free" space granted to those who cannot 
afford anything else. That this would be yet another summer marked by 
the unstoppable escalation of assaults on free spaces, price hikes, 
hardships, controversies, and injustices was not hard to predict - also 
because these are not forecasts but confirmations: the annual data do 
nothing but reinforce the worsening situation rather than disprove it or 
offer glimmers of hope.

Yet, at the final stretch of the 2025 summer season, some people are 
still surprised and eager to report what happens at the beaches: making 
rankings of the cities with the most expensive seaside resorts in Italy, 
reposting celebrities who express outrage and lament the desolation of 
pay-to-enter beaches and how much they had to shell out for a sunbed, an 
umbrella, and a plate of pasta.

According to the numbers, the most expensive cities are Rimini, Padua, 
and Naples; but apart from Sicily - where costs have increased "only" by 
about 6% - throughout most of Italy prices for everything, starting with 
basic leisure services, have soared. Moreover, despite the focus on 
beaches, the mountains are by no means excluded from this phenomenon: 
they suffer the same invasions as coastal areas, and, above all, the 
unhealthy idea of reinventing experiences until they lose their original 
essence - transforming, for example, camping into glamping (glamorous 
camping with amenities), offering overnight stays in treehouses at 
astronomical prices, or minimalist tastings marketed as "fake 
zero-kilometer" products. So much so that the common refrain among 
Italians has become: "Holidays at home!" - because there is hardly 
anywhere left to go without the risk of being ripped off and spending an 
absurd amount of money for half a day (the other half wasted in highway 
traffic jams).

What is more frightening than anything else is not so much witnessing 
yet another application of the basic capitalist reasoning - if a service 
or product can be sold for ten times its value because someone is 
willing to pay, there is no reason to lower the price; speculation 
should not be limited - but the shallow analysis of those who denounce 
all this.

When faced with calls to review the costs of a day at a beach resort - 
which makes sense and should be addressed - to make less luxurious the 
experiences now sold almost exclusively to foreigners because they have 
become unaffordable for Italians, and with analyses that try to be more 
complex by linking this to the miserable wages of an ever poorer Italy, 
one might invite them to go further: to use this oft-mentioned crisis to 
understand what must be changed across the board. In doing so, we would 
give true meaning to the word "crisis," whose etymology contains the 
idea of taking a stand, holding a precise point of view, and making a 
choice. As long as the reasoning of those opposing speculation remains 
"do it, but within certain limits," the problem will not only remain 
unsolved but the debate will easily turn into farce. Can one really hope 
to keep speculation under control? The answer comes from Unioncamere, 
which reports that by June 30, 2025, 108 new beach resorts had been 
added in Italy, reaching a total of 7,352 compared to 7,244 the previous 
year. Once again, the opportunity to turn a problem into a social 
struggle is lost: beaches must be free, mountains must be free, the 
right to experience must be safeguarded - and to guarantee all this, 
speculation must be fought absolutely, not merely softened.

Instead, the core of this uproar is fueled by ridiculous narratives of 
Italians versus foreigners, families with their own umbrellas and 
homemade lunches depicted with a mix of pity and scorn, as if it were a 
sign of decline rather than a reasonable way to enjoy a place. Once 
again, it is convenient to point out the problem, to wave it like a 
flag, without doing anything to solve it. No analysis has attempted to 
highlight the collapse of a certain holiday model, encouraging the 
boycott of service circuits that - among accommodations, restaurants, 
cultural attractions, experiences of all kinds, and transportation 
tickets - drive the continuous, unstoppable rise in overall costs. This 
is not seen as a flaw to correct but as an intrinsic signal of the agony 
of a system that survives precisely because, yes, there are those who 
pay without realizing how unreasonable it is, and there are also those 
who cannot afford it but would do so if they could - thus failing to 
challenge this concept of vacation in favor of a more virtuous one.

And if it seems miserable to go to a free beach with an umbrella and a 
packed lunch, it becomes clear why alternatives such as house swapping 
(whose network, it must be said, is already adopting mainstream 
mechanisms like reviews, ratings, and visibility, though it still allows 
another way of traveling), long-distance hiking with mountain hut stays, 
certain forms of camping, and enjoying places and contexts free of 
tourist attitudes remain marginal. These are chosen by such a tiny 
percentage of people that they cannot counteract the dominant 
consumerist travel practices.

Alongside a sector that feeds on its own repeated collapse, there is a 
population unwilling to rethink leisure practices and needs. Hand in 
hand with companies acquiring kilometers of beaches only to return them 
privatized and inaccessible, there are all those who dislike nature but 
go to a mountain location because it went viral on social media for 
selfies; every person nurturing the need to be a tourist in the most 
consumerist and alienated sense of the term. And so we know that next 
time - whether Christmas, Easter, or the whole summer - we will once 
again roam as tourists, complaining that everything is expensive and 
awful, while reading in the newspapers that tourism is in crisis but, 
fortunately, Italy remains a coveted destination.

Désirée Carruba Toscano.

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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