Sicily, hotels: 'we have water and we don't send tourists away'

“No problem. Tourists are not leaving.” The president of Federalberghi of Agrigento, Francesco Picarella, seeks to reassure with respect to the tam tam following articles in the international press to give an account of the drought that has been encircling Sicily since February and that after the fallout on agriculture threatens to reverberate on tourism. After a July 1 report by The Guardian on fields of parched land due to the lack of rainfall affecting crops and the ability to water livestock, CNN, a few days later, on July 6, intervened reporting that “small hotels and guesthouses in the city and nearby coast are forced to turn away tourists” in the absence of water resources. On July 24, it was the turn of the New York Times to open its website with a lengthy piece on Sicily ’s drought titled, “After losing crops to drought, Sicily fears losing tourism as well.” An article that drew an outraged reaction from Tourism Minister Daniela Santanchè on X: “No one denies the tragedy of the drought in Sicily, but drying up tourism as well, blaming it as the New York Times does, adds damage to damage.”

Agrigento next year will be Capital of Culture 2025, and the Sicilian city’s Federalberghi president Francesco Picarella, reached by phone by Finestre Sull’Arte, wants to reassure that the accommodation system is holding up: “No one has left,” he says in reference to tourists. “There is certainly some problem in Agrigento, but the hotels are equipped to remedy the situation,” he says referring to the cisterns with which hotels are equipped to contain and accumulate water and thus have it always available for the needs of their guests. With respect to the echo he had about the consequences of the drought for tourists, he rejects any alarmism: “The problem might have happened for some B&Bs” in the historic center “that had to reschedule some reservations, but we’re not sending anyone away. Tourists are not running away. There is indeed,” the exponent of the association most representative of accommodation facilities reiterates, “a general problem for the whole of Sicily, we are a bit more difficult in finding water but we find it, we manage to find it either publicly or privately, we find it.”

Water supply for Sicily is not a new problem, unfortunately, so they have been equipping themselves for years with tanks and cisterns for condominiums or for accommodations, and for additional needs there are the tankers provided by local authorities or private individuals who bring water where there is none.

In fact, the regional government has decided to rationalize water to the agricultural world in order to make it available to civilian dwellings and accommodation facilities, which is why Regional Councillor for Tourism Elvira Amata said that “Tourists do not notice the drought.”

On the other hand, it is agriculture that absorbs the most water (“Coldiretti stated that Sicilian farms have lost an average of more than 50 percent of their grain harvest,” “Bank of Italy stated that the production generated by agriculture in Sicily declined last year due to climate shocks, while tourism grew,” reports the NYT), and so it is counted that rationing may be enough to keep tourists from losing it. On the scale of priorities after civilian use has been put tourism, the sector is to be preserved. And on the eve of an event like the Capital of Culture a negative word of mouth is not a good viaticum.

Image: the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento. Photo: Raffaele Reccia

Sicily, hotels: 'we have water and we don't send tourists away'

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