PESCARA – The result achieved by Abruzzo in terms of tourist presences in 2023 is comforting, and should be welcomed positively as a good start, hoping that the summer season just starting will confirm this trend even better. Now, however, we need to increase our region’s ability to make itself known on foreign markets, a sector in which there are still the greatest critical issues. This was stated in a note by CNA Turismo Abruzzo, according to which the picture drawn by Istat in the recent report “Tourism trends in Italy: first evidence for 2023″, «must be considered a starting point of great value, given that it is marked from over 1.7 million arrivals and 6.5 million presences in 2023 in our accommodation establishments. Numbers that project us beyond the pandemic crisis, and that lead to reasonable optimism.”
«In this context – says the president Claudio Di Dionisio – we would like to underline above all the strong increase recorded by non-hotel businesses, confirming the greater territorial coverage that this type of accommodation, such as B&Bs and agritourisms, ensures in an area like the ours, and their strategic role in integrating the hotel offer: because between 2022 and 2023, arrivals in hotel establishments increased by 6.1% but with a slight decline in presences, while in these structures arrivals reached +13 .9% and attendance 6.2% more.” As mentioned, the issue of origin remains, which places Abruzzo at the bottom of the national ranking among regions in terms of foreign guests, with 85.6% of residents in Italy and 14.4% of non-residents. «We therefore need greater attention to our presence on foreign markets – adds the head of CNA Turismo Abruzzo Gabriele Marchese – because it is a decisive strategic segment in which we are still struggling to establish ourselves. For this reason, it is necessary to strengthen collaboration between the Region and operators to study strategies, packages and paths together.”
In order for this leap in quality to actually occur, again according to the CNA, it is necessary to fully count on the role that the most important dedicated infrastructure, the airport, can play in attracting and facilitating foreign presences: «The drop in travelers recorded between January and April of the Pescara port is not a very comforting sign. Because if it is true that this is the result of the cancellation of two internal routes, Turin and Milan Linate, it is also true that the second above all represents a strategic hub for being able to reach Abruzzo also from abroad. In this sense «the CNA, which in the history of the management company, Saga, was the only business association to have invested in recent years, hopes for the resumption of an active dialogue that indicates times and ways of relaunching the connections ».
