Tickets to visit ruins buried by Mount Vesuvius, seen by 4 million this summer, to be capped at 20,000 a day
Pompeii plans to limit visitor numbers to 20,000 a day and introduce personalised tickets from next week in an effort to cope with overtourism and protect the world heritage site, officials said.
This summer, a record 4 million people visited the remains of the ancient Roman city, buried under ash and rock after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.
Continue reading...Figure of 21.8 million international visitors to Spain is 7.3% rise on 2023, says national statistics institute
Spain logged a record 21.8 million international visitors this summer, official data has revealed, during a period when anti-tourism protests also took place across the country.
The figure is a 7.3% rise on 2023, the national statistics institute (INE) said.
Continue reading...Arrigo Cipriani says waves from vessels that ignore speed limits on Giudecca canal are leaving diners with wet feet
The Harry’s Bar culinary empire is as synonymous with Venice as its canals, inventing the bellini cocktail and hosting noted guests including Orson Welles, Ernest Hemingway and Charlie Chaplin during its 93 years in business.
But the lapping of the city’s waters has proved too much for the owner, Arrigo Cipriani, who is suing the city’s council and port master’s office because the feet of his well-heeled customers keep getting soaked by waves from speeding boats.
Continue reading...State-owned company halts initiative after warnings over opening up ‘right to roam’ laws to large numbers of visitors
A Norwegian tourism campaign aimed at promoting the country as a destination for outdoor activities has been suspended after warnings that opening up the country’s “right to roam” laws to mass tourism could lead to environmental destruction.
Allemannsretten – which gives Norwegians the legal right to camp, swim, ski and walk freely in nature, regardless of who the landowner is – provides the basis of friluftslivet (outdoor life), seen as foundational to the mountainous country’s culture.
Continue reading...Six properties disconnected in past year but there are thought to be 5,000 unlawful apartments in Spanish city
A court in Seville in southern Spain has ruled that the city council is within its rights to cut off the water supply to illegal tourist apartments.
Over the past year the city has disconnected the supply to six illegal apartments. Three owners appealed but the judge, mindful of neighbours’ complaints about noise, accepted the council’s argument that the apartments were not the owners’ residences.
Continue reading...As madrileños head for the cooler Atlantic coast, those in the north have given them an unflattering nickname
Galicia and Spain’s other Atlantic regions are becoming increasingly popular holiday destinations for Spaniards, and people from Madrid in particular, as they turn their backs on overcrowded and overheated Mediterranean resorts in favour of the more temperate north.
But while welcoming the income from tourism, Galicians have also given a nickname to what they see as their notoriously haughty visitors from the Spanish capital: fodechinchos, which translates literally as “fish thieves”.
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