“The reopening of the Contessa? For us a godsend”, begins Luciano Cecchini, president of the city’s Consortium hotels. “We are seeing faces and friends that we had lost – says Cecchini – because they chose other locations. Because in the end our ‘friendly tourism’ is a winner. Before the reopening of the Contessa we were a window towards Umbria, now we have become a great door again “.
The added value is that “you arrive immediately and you are at the seaside – says Cecchini –. Then the fact that ours is still a tourism on a human scale, the prices are not high both for sleeping and for going to the beach as happens in Versilia And then there is the fact that many Perugians also come to eat good fish. All these things are bringing back along our coast, from Fano to Marotta, that Umbrian tourism which had been somewhat lost.” But there is also another aspect. “Religious tourism is also being reviewed, that is, buses arriving from Rome or the other coast and heading to Loreto. Now they stop again in Fano for a break: they eat and then leave again. This too is a tourism which the traces had been lost. The reopening of the Contessa was a blessing, not only for the influx that occurs during the weekends, but also for what concerns the hit and run and that is, you arrive in the morning and then leave in the evening. And there The good thing about Perugia tourism is that it is all people with good spending power.”
It was calculated in the golden times that on weekends alone there were around three thousand people arriving at the seaside, especially from Gubbio and Città di Castello. A movement that is getting back into motion. Between Torrette and Marotta there are 21 hotels. Boris Rapa, former president of Assoturismo, has the pulse of the situation. “At the moment – he says – I’m struggling to get numbers also because we have people mainly from northern Italy. But there is actually the feeling that there are a few more customers arriving from Umbria. However, it is still too early to understand which ones It will be the real impact of the reopening of the Contessa street because in my opinion the calculations will have to be done at the end of the season. However, it is certainly true that apartments rented even for a few days are proliferating and increasing significantly.”
Competition from B&Bs is becoming one of the issues on the table for hoteliers across the Riviera, so much so that a meeting with the prefect Emanuela Greco is expected soon. The knot? Lack of control and evasion.
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