Italian village inundated after offering free tourist lodgings

A REMOTE Italian village has been overwhelmed by holiday requests after it offered free lodgings in a bid to attract tourists.

The residents of San Giovanni, in Galdo, a medieval hilltop hamlet in the Molise region, launched the initiative in June, promising travellers a oneweek stay “without financial contribution”, with the hope of boosting the tourism industry in their often overlooked part of southern Italy.

Their online campaign, called Regalati a Molise (Give yourself to Molise), went viral, and its organisers are now fielding more than 8,000 applications from around the world. However San Giovanni’s small size means it is only able to accept 12 visitors a week.

“We did not expect such a response,” said Stefano Trotta, who is leading the campaign. “We had about 70 requests from Kazakhstan, some from remote Russian towns ... from all over the world really.”

Applicants were asked why they wanted to visit Molise, with three village houses set aside for the rest of the summer, ready to host those who gave the best reasons.

The campaign has been so successful that neighbouring villages have inquired about joining the project, hoping to boost their local tourism industries, thereby creating jobs and even halting a steady, decades-long population decline largely driven by young Molisanos leaving to find work in Rome and Naples.

Other regions of Italy have also started offering incentives to tourists in an effort to rescue local economies after months of stagnation from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sicily has offered to pay half the air fare for tourists who book flight and accommodation packages on the island this summer, while the national government offered €500 (£450) to lowincome households with the stipulation that it was spent on a domestic holiday.

Other towns and villages have resorted to more extreme measures. Some have attempted to reverse their fortunes by putting abandoned homes on the market for just €1 (90p) each.

Fabbriche di Vergemoli, a village in the mountainous Garfagnana region of northern Tuscany that offered its abandoned houses for sale for €1, has had such success that it has attracted investment of around €4million.

The offer has received interest from all over the world, including the US, Russia and China, and all the available properties have been snapped up.

In addition, the newfound interest in the village led to other properties being bought for €20,000 to €40,000, and around 40 restoration projects are due to start in the next year.