The turnover generated in Venice by tourism for the non-hotel residential sector (when travellers choose non-hotel accommodation for their stays, such as tourist lets, BnBs etc.) suffered a sharp decline in 2020: figures were down 70.2 million euros, with a loss of 63.74% compared to the same period in 2019, allowing us to conclude that tourism in Venice has suffered one of its worst years on record due to COVID-19 in Italy.
This was revealed in a recent analysis by OTEX, an organisation which studies this non-hotel tourism sector in Italy. The aim of their most recent study was to get a more complete view of the phenomenon at a very delicate time for the tourism sector, hit hard by the consequences of the pandemic and the consequent lockdown restrictions.
After positive numbers in the first two months of 2020 when it came to non-hotel stays in Venice (+5.15% in January, +27.5% in February compared to 2019), the trend in 2020 showed negative figures since March, with the biggest drop in May (-80.53%). The market analysed by OTEX, at the last update, also shows a reduction in the number of listings in Venice by of over 1,620 units.
"In percentage terms, therefore, we estimate a reduction in the number of active units in the market of 22.1% compared to the same period of the previous year", explains Marco Nicosia, data analyst at OTEX, highlighting how "more and more operators, in a progressive manner since March, have been losing confidence in tourism and are increasingly leaving the market, with a slowdown of this phenomenon in September 2020". The month-on-month percentage change in supply for tourist accomodation in Venice was around -22% in November, compared to -19% in August and -10% in May.
"Venice was hit first by floods and then by the coronavirus pandemic, and today we find ourselves with a completely empty city," says Stefano Bettanin, president of Property Managers Italia, according to whom "today there is a need for concrete help, for a system of simplification that will enable us to relaunch non-hotel tourism. This will be the first sector to restart once the health emergency is over, and it will restart other activities that are currently at a standstill. It is neither right nor useful to point the finger, as has been done in Venice, at a sector that has allowed cities to live, and that other European countries, such as France, are moving to encourage".