This is a story about tourism, but also about the ability of extraordinary people to never give up.
Romagna is Italian California. 100 km of beaches that offer all possible tourist services: ranging from family-run B&B to 5-stars hotels; from bathing establishments for families to surfers beaches (as serfing in Romagna is possible).
According to “Confartigianato” data, in 2018 more than 16 million tourists booked their holidays in the Rimini’s province infrastructures only.
During the years of the tourist boom, a figure that is now a characteristic of the Romagna beaches has gradually grown up : the “bagnino” (lifeguard): a sentinel watching over the bathers’ safety, but also a real star surrounded by “Groupies” admiring their local Baywatch.
However, the macho image is only one side of the coin: together with the bathing establishment managers they are the ones who really carry out all the management of the beach.
Due to the current global crisis tourist flows slowed down and partly blocked; the official data from the Regional Tourism Department show an 83% drop in presences in the area in May, compared to the same period last year.
The great tourist machine, however, started regularly, thanks to all the people of Romagna who, as usual, did not give up and had the courage to open the business despite all the difficulties of the period.
Beside the fact that Romagna sea is not proper like the Caribbean one, they did not collapse even when in 1989 the mucilage invaded the shores: the sea was reduced to a marsh by the phenomenon of eutrophication and for tour operators it was equivalent to the Great American Crash of 1929, but working on infrastructures and anticipating the holidays habit changes, they managed to confirm themselves as
leaders in the Italian hospitality industry (Romagna is overcome by Rome only when speaking of tourist presences).
This year lifeguards did not want to hear about plexiglass boxes on the beach, however they strictly applied all the protocols required by the Ministry of Health to ensure social distancing.
And partially they did it again: Assoturisimo** data showed an unexpected almost “sold out” for the first weeks of August and managed to contain the loss of turnover for the summer quarter to 27.1% (in the same quarter, the art cities of the region recorded losses of more than 50%)
According to the historical lifeguards “there are no more tourists than once” but it seems that this year the battle is (almost) won.