The new normal Quieter, gentler pleasures

Visitors will return to Italy, but like locals, they will seek out the paths less travelled, says Anne Hanley

Frustrated travellers the world over are longing to get (back) to Italy. The international love affair with the bel paese is old and deep: its unique treasures are sorely missed.

And if would-be visitors are desperate to return, Italy is similarly keen to have them. After all, more than 6 per cent of the workforce in the world’s fifth-most-visited country depends on the tourism sector to make a living, and last year tourist numbers crashed by more than 80 per cent. And yet, for those who risked the trip, Italy in summer 2020 was a delight: you might even say an eye-opener.

The adventurous few found themselves among Italians who – as always in the warmer months – moved their lives outside, doing their socialising in the (relatively safe) open air, filling cafés and restaurants that had wisely been allotted more table-spreading space in streets and piazze by local authorities. The conviviality was positively joyful after months of isolated gloom and anxiety.

What was more unusual was the fact that holidaying Italians, deprived of their globe-trotting, were there in such massive numbers, motoring to places they’d heard about but never quite managed to visit, and rediscovering just how much their own country had to offer.

Italians apply sound criteria to their holiday choices, and may offer a good indication of where incoming tourism will head as we grope our way cautiously back to some kind of postCovid normality.

When it comes to disease, they’re decidedly risk-averse: witness their widespread acceptance of masks. But when travelling, they balance this with a taste for novelty, even adventure. They’re generally willing to try something out of the ordinary... as long as it comes with good food.

In general in 2020, Italians wisely headed for places they expected to find no crowds. They sought the simple and the homely: somewhere amenable where they could blend in with the local population, in a community that made them feel everyone was looking out for each other. Italy is full of just such places.

Small country towns with the occasional artistic gem and plenty of local

colour, for example, enjoyed modest booms, as I reported in August from my home town of Città della Pieve in Umbria. Similarly, mountain resorts with lashings of fresh air and ample opportunities for outdoor sports and activities saw unexpected influxes. Smaller hotels, farm holiday accommodation and rental villas were snapped up. Pack-em-in resorts were less popular.

The great losers in the summer of 2020 were Italy’s splendid, art-rich historic cities. Who, after all, wanted to be packed in to an urban destination where a large part of the must-sees are in crowded indoor venues? Venice, Rome, Florence, Siena: these traditionally teeming hubs were so many ghost towns, with shuttered hotels and deserted sights.

Until we’re 100 per cent certain

that crowds aren’t hotbeds of contagion, many people will think twice about rushing back. Moreover, in some oversubscribed destinations, there’s concern about whether a return to business as usual is what they really want.

In a miraculously quiet Positano in early summer, one hotelier told me that he’d never seen his town looking so beautiful. Those few visitors, he told me, were what was really sustainable in a small Amalfi Coast town – except, of course, with those numbers the tourism industry in its current form would die.

In their watery, locked-down city, Venetians have been torn, pondering how to reactivate the industry that keeps the city afloat without a return to the good old, bad old days: revelling in the glory of an empty Venice while wondering if their businesses will survive until such time as visitors creep cautiously back.

The world will return to Italy, of course, but maybe not to the same parts of it, nor seeking quite the same experiences. Anything like a return to pre-Covid “normal” will be a slow and fraught process.

Italians are willing to try something out of the ordinary... as long as it comes with good food

Small town girls: Città della Pieve in Umbria enjoyed a modest tourist boom