2024-04-24 09:11:19
BOLZANO. Bolzano is increasingly under attack. It may be because, as Roland Buratti says, “it is the first Mediterranean city for Germans and the first German for Italians”, but the numbers that the president of the tourist board then rattles off speak with the tone of a boom: plus 9.12 % of arrivals in 2023 compared to the previous year and a 7.66% increase in overnight stays. With the Italians ranking above the Germans for 135 thousand arrivals and more against 110 thousand. A progression slowed down only in the Covid years, but which then began to gallop again, surpassing the last pre-pandemic ones.
And these legions of visitors find a city with still open critical issues – traffic, lack of large hotels – but with positive numbers, as revealed by the mayor who arrived yesterday at the Company’s meeting: «The unemployment rate has dropped from 5.8 in last years to 2.9 today – lists Renzo Caramaschi – and its renewed tourist vocation has given a good hand”.
Much of the credit goes to the Air b&b network. But for the future they will not be enough, hotels will be needed.
Merano teaches. «Also because – adds Luis Walcher, provincial councilor – if they grow further, it will be a problem for the residents. The people of Bolzano will not find a home…”
What remains, however, is a city that finds itself holding a treasure, certainly also due to its logistical-geographical location but which it seems capable of exploiting.
«We think that the first modern hotel was born here in 1910» recalls Michil Costa. The hotelier-writer-environmentalist, invited to offer less mathematical and more sociological day-to-day scenarios, sees the capital as a possible place for a cultural but also ethnic meeting-pot: “It’s not enough to live together, we need to welcome the world.”
But to do this we need to invent new areas. The structures, for one thing.
And here Costa sinks: «The Museion? It does not work. We must speak clearly: it is no longer needed as it is now, for debates and comparisons between elites. Let’s make it another space, young and interconnected.”
And finally: Bolzano also needs a Michelin star for food. In short, never stop.
So much so that the Company, with its vice-president Klaus Berger and director Roberta Agosti, can only smile at last year’s results and those of this one which are still on the rise: 388,941 arrivals and 873,305 overnight stays.
Massive presences, not only of Italians and Germans, but also of Austrians, in third place, and then gradually the surprise of the Americans (almost 20 thousand), and again the Swiss, Dutch and English.
Looking at the balance sheets, the Bolzano tourist board is one of the few to support itself with 51 percent of its own income and to have an interesting real estate asset: Castel Mareccio, the attached car park – for which the management is about to be renewed – the vineyard at Castel Roncolo.
But, given that we are never satisfied, for the future president Roland Buratti hopes to increase another figure: the duration of overnight stays. Today settled at around two days, two and a half days on average. P.CA.
2024-04-24 09:11:19