“More and more often, before booking, customers ask us if there is regular water availability in our rooms. I believe that this is enough to highlight the devastating image damage that our territory is suffering precisely in the summer preceding the year in which Agrigento will be the Italian Capital of Culture”.
This is what Francesco Picarella, head of Federalberghi, owner of the Hotel del Viale, located in the historic center of the city of Temples, says. A territory, that of Agrigento, which is going through an unprecedented water crisis, with water supply shifts that in some cases reach almost 12 days of waiting. “We are well structured, we try not to make tourists perceive the difficulties we have,” adds Picarella.
“However, it is clear that it is frustrating to do business in these conditions, in a cursed land like ours, where while the taps are dry, half of the water is lost underground and in the streets due to a leaky water network”. “I had to install two cisterns, because with just one I could no longer meet my water needs,” explains Angelo Agosto, owner of ‘Il Giardino Antico’, a holiday home with four beds: “Unfortunately the situation is complicated, if it continues like this I fear that in two months I will be forced to close and cancel the reservations I have already received”, he adds.
According to what appears, numerous reservations have already been canceled in various accommodation facilities for fear, on the part of tourists, of encountering the inconvenience of staying in hotels without water. “We are trying to use our reserves as wisely as possible, we have even replaced all the aerators in the taps and showers in our rooms to try to save as much water as possible”, says Giovanni Lopez, owner of the Bed & Breakfast ‘Le Cinque Novelle’, a modern structure nestled in the streets of the historic center of Agrigento.
“Rightly – he concludes – people ask us for reassurance before coming, but we don’t know what to answer, we are neither the municipality nor Aica (the public company that manages water resources in the province). Situation that, from Agrigento in Sciacca, from Licata to Menfi, the entire tourist accommodation sector is affected, which risks serious economic consequences in a production sector which, in fact, is the only one on which this territory can count.
