Liguria, one of Italy’s most attractive regions for international tourism, has long been at the center of a heated debate on flow management-just think of the long-standing problems of overcrowding in Cinque Terre. Now the main trade associations representing tour guides, tour leaders, interpreters and specialized operators are intervening in the debate and formulating a proposal for flow management. Proposing their ideas are Giuseppe Maggiolo, president of AGAEL (Association of Environmental Excursion Guides Liguria), Michela Ceccarini, president of AGTL (Association of Tourist Guides Liguria), Serena Siri, president of AIGAE Liguria (Italian Association of Environmental Excursion Guides), Donatella Beneventi, president of ALAIT (Ligurian Association of Tour Guides and National Tourist Interpreters), and Antonella Cama, president of Federagit - Confesercenti Liguria.
After the recent decisions of the municipal administrations of Camogli, Santa Margherita Ligure, Portofino and Rapallo on the tourist bus quota, and the hypotheses of new limits at Cinque Terre, the associations are calling for different rules: not generalized bans, but a system that knows how to balance the needs of residents, protection of the territory and safeguarding local economic activities. The spark was sparked last spring, when the administrations of the Portofino area introduced restrictions on tourist bus access exceeding 9.70 meters. The measures, which came into effect with the season already underway, caught many small and medium-sized travel agencies by surprise, forcing them to revise their groups’ schedules. In several cases, operators had to abandon their original reservations and reorganize trips and visits with unplanned and more expensive alternatives, such as boat connections. The impact also reverberated on the local economic fabric: stores and clubs, especially in Santa Margherita, experienced a drop in customers, a sign that organized tourism is having a major impact on business vitality.
In recent months, the same administrators have announced the launch of phase two, which includes the creation of interchange parking lots and a digital portal for booking. In the Cinque Terre, however, the debate centers on a proposal to introduce a maximum limit of 25 people per guide or companion. There are no bus bans yet, as most visitors reach the national park by train, but access is already regulated at Levanto and La Spezia stations. The consequences, the associations denounce, are similar to those observed in Tigullio: growth of groups with lightning programs, in which two villages and even Pisa are visited in a single day, and reduction of longer stays, with overnight stays and widespread spillover effects on the territory.
The associations recognize that mass tourism has significant effects on the daily lives of residents, who are forced to cope with crowding, rising service prices, rising real estate prices and the gradual transformation of homes into vacation homes. However, they stress, the burden of restrictions cannot be shifted to only certain categories of travelers. In particular, those who travel in groups are often considered more intrusive, but this does not take into account the diversity of motivations and types of groups: “As much as it is true that the arrival of a group of 20-50 people at the same time appears more invasive than the arrival of 20-50 people in random order,” say the associations, "it is not considered that with regulations that have the stated purpose of not affecting the overall number of presences, but only that of groups, the real risk is to implement discrimination between categories of travelers: in eastern Liguria, there is a tendency to think that all those who arrive in the territory in groups are ’cruise passengers,’ which is not true, even though the number of ships given permission to dock by municipalities is massive. In reality, people who travel in groups travel for education (from elementary schools to Italian and foreign cultural groups), for devotion (pilgrims and religious groups), for work (congresses) or to practice sports activities. Those who travel in groups, in some cases, have no other options, for reasons of age, health and economic availability or trivially because they do not know foreign languages. For many, traveling in groups is an opportunity to socialize, and organized trips contribute greatly to the much coveted seasonal adjustment, since they take advantage of the availability of hotels, when they do not have requests from couples and families, in midweek periods and generally in the low season’.
The risk, according to the associations, is that the squeeze on buses and groups will favor large tour operators and online platforms at the expense of small and medium-sized Italian agencies. The scarcity of bus stalls and the difficulty of booking often leads smaller entities to give up, because when the group is ready there are no more seats available. The situation is different for large operators, who can book well in advance due to a larger customer base, reorganize schedules quickly, and better absorb cost increases. This imbalance is also reflected in the Cinque Terre, where for years groups organized by traditional agencies have been progressively replaced by standardized groups focused on quick programs with little connection to authentic knowledge of the area.
The associations therefore propose an alternative way forward: not to eliminate access to groups, but to introduce booking criteria that reward those who choose to enhance the local economy. The proposal is to modulate the daily number of available stalls according to the season, reducing them during the busiest periods and expanding them on midweek or low season days. It also calls for distinguishing booking channels according to the services chosen: giving priority to those who stay overnight in hotels in the area, those who use local restaurants, those who spend several days visiting, those who participate in tastings of typical products such as oil mills and wineries, and those who book museums and guided tours with professionals.
“An ideal system,” say the guides, “would firstly involve varying the daily quota of bookable stalls according to the season: decreasing on bridge days, when a very high presence of individuals is expected, and increasing during midweek periods and away from holidays. But above all, in order to guarantee a fruition that enhances our territory, we believe it is essential to provide, within the framework of a reservation-based system, the creation of distinct channels according to the services the group uses, rewarding those who choose hotels and restaurants on site, those who dedicate more days to visiting the area, those who have tastings of typical products (oil mills, wineries and other local realities), those who have booked tourist ando cultural services such as museum sites or guided tours with specialized tour guides or environmental guides. In this way equal rights of access would be guaranteed to all, but rewarding those who devote more time and attention to the visit, those who book more services with a spillover effect on the economy of the entire territory and not only on the tourism sector, without in fact preventing access to those with less time and spending. Thus respecting not only the principles of our Constitution, but also giving ’breathing space’ to small tour operators (often Italian when not local) and without restricting the range of customers of the merchants of the resorts that with the new ordinances are often cut off from the passage of tourists visiting for the day.”
The stated goal is twofold: to protect residents and localities from overly concentrated tourism while ensuring a fair distribution of economic opportunities. The associations insist on the need to respect the constitutional principles of equality and freedom of movement while avoiding implicit discrimination among different types of travelers. The belief is that regulation must be targeted and intelligent, capable of rewarding quality and not simply cutting numbers.
The tourism professions in Liguria are therefore calling for an experimental phase that goes beyond contingent restrictions and is able to reconcile sustainability, residents’ rights and accessibility. A medium- and long-term vision that allows us to continue to make unique places like Portofino and the Cinque Terre usable without penalizing those who, for decades, have been helping to tell their stories and bring them to life through their daily work in the organized tourism sector.
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| Invasive tour groups? Liguria guides propose regulation |
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