The holiday sector, like all others, is in a downturn at the moment. Italy, one of the world’s most visited countries thanks to its food, culture and climate, has itself suffered a drop of somewhere between 6-7% in visitors this year, leading to fears about job losses in the tourism sector.
Rimini, though, bucks the trend according to recently released figures which show the numbers of visitors relatively unchanged from last year – no mean feat given the economic crisis.
The marketing campaign in Germany featuring Emilia-Romagna striker Luca Toni, who plays for Bayern Munich
The figures for the first six months of the year show that up to 1.790.112 people arrived in the province, for an average stay of just over one week – a small drop from last year (1.4%), but nothing compared to other areas and the national average.
In fact Rimini has seen two significant increases, despite the global recession. The first is a rise in German tourists to the province – figures suggest that an increase of about 15%-20% in the number of German tourists arriving to the Adriatic Riviera – the fruit, no doubt of an intensive marketing campaign (with the involvment of Bayern Munich striker Luca Toni) and handy flights into the regions airports.
The other interesting figure is employment – while other resorts have been laying people off, the tourism sector in the province of Rimini has been responsible for an increase of some 2.3% in employment.
It’s good news, to see how Rimini as a province is reacting to the twin-challenges of the recession and a changing holiday market. Challenges are nothing new in this part of the world, though. Remember how Rimini, which was bombarded heavily during the second world war (the battle for Rimini saw most of the city destroyed), picked itself up and started from scratch to rebuild itself as a resort.
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