Last weekend in August between counter-exodus and thunderstorms. The holidays are over for 22 million Italians who had chosen to go on vacation this month. But the traffic on the roads of the country, although intense, was without particular problems despite a weekend marked by the red sticker and the yellow alert for bad weather spread in eleven regions. The airports of Milan and Rome are once again crowded, like the times before the pandemic.
Many movements took place between the clouds and the fear of weather complications. The rains and more have caused damage especially in Tuscany and Puglia. In Salento a violent hailstorm hit with grains of ice the size of walnuts, causing flooding, falling trees and destroying crops, especially in the Lecce area. On the Tuscan islands and in the south of the region there have been downpours that have affected not only the archipelago but also the Apennines and shortly before on the Sienese side about 50 millimeters of rain had already fallen in a single hour.
The water bombs in some places, however, did not stop the returns. The greatest traffic flows, Anas explained, occurred towards the north of the country and towards the large urban centers, with sustained but smooth circulation. Significant flow also in a southerly direction, for holidaymakers at the beginning of September. Some landslides due to bad weather have led to the closure of some sections, such as the ‘Metaurense’ state road in Urbania (in the province of Pesaro-Urbino) and that of ‘Alemagna’ in Vittorio Veneto, in the province of Treviso.
The counter-exodus also concerned the airports. Those in Milan at Linate and Malpensa, where a total of 405,000 passengers will pass between 26 and 29 August (300,000 at Malpensa and 105,000 at Linate): according to Sea, the company that manages the Milanese airports, these are mainly arrivals and, from an estimate, 90% of pre-Covid traffic would have been recovered. Fiumicino was also full, with many travelers leaving for holidays in the late summer period. Among the most popular destinations, also according to the flight schedule scheduled for this weekend, are in particular Greece (Santorini, Rhodes), the island of Crete, Croatia (Split), the Balearic and Canary Islands, but also the Italian ones, such as Sardinia and Sicily. Timeless, as always, the European cities (Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, Toulouse, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam), Great Britain, Scotland and Ireland.
In general, for the majority of Italians returning (53%) the duration of the holiday was less than a week while for almost one in three Italians (30%) the duration – according to a balance drawn up by Coldiretti / Ixe ‘- is between one and two weeks, but there is 3% who have even been out for over a month. The average duration was almost ten days (9.8), still less than the more than eleven days of the pre-pandemic period, even if on the rise compared to the previous two-year period marked by Covid. The average expenditure allocated by Italians to summer holidays was 645 euros per person, an increase of 11% compared to last year. 43% of tourists – underlines Coldiretti – remained in any case below 500 euros of expenditure and a similar 43% between 500 and 1000 euros, 13% between 1000 and 2000 euros while only 1% has exceeded this limit. According to Coldiretti, about a third of the shopping was destined for food to have meals in restaurants, agritourisms or on the street but also to buy products often to be taken home as souvenirs. The 2022 holidays recorded a clear preference on national destinations but there is also a 23% share of Italians, almost one in four among those who travel, who decided to spend a holiday abroad.
Source: Ansa
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