Last weekend in August between exodus and thunderstorms. The holiday is over for the 22 million Italians who chose to go on vacation this month. But the traffic on the country’s roads, despite its intensity, was free of certain problems despite the weekend marked by the red label, and the yellow alert for bad weather spread to eleven districts. Milan and Rome airports are crowded again, like the times before the pandemic.
Many movements took place between clouds and fear of weather complications. Rain and others caused particular damage in Tuscany and Puglia. In Salento, a violent hailstorm hit walnut-sized grains of ice, causing flooding, shedding trees and destroying crops, especially in the Lecce region. On the Tuscan Islands and in the south of the region, torrential rains affected not only the archipelago, but also the Apennines, and shortly before that on the Sienese side, about 50 mm of rain had already fallen in an hour.
But the water bombs in some places did not stop the return. Anas explained that the largest traffic flows occurred towards the north of the country and towards large urban centers, with continuous but smooth movement. A large influx is also in the south direction, for holidays at the beginning of September. Some landslides due to bad weather have closed some sections, such as the state road “Metaurense” in Urbania (in the province of Pesaro-Urbino) and the “Alemagna” road in Vittorio Veneto in the province of Treviso.
Counter-migration also concerns airports. Those in Milan in Linate and Malpensa, where a total of 405,000 passengers will pass between August 26 and 29 (300,000 in Malpensa and 105,000 in Linate): According to Sea, the company that operates Milan’s airports, these are mainly arrivals and, according to estimates, were It is possible to recover 90% of pre-Covid traffic. Fiumicino was also full, with many vacation travelers leaving in the late summer period. Among the most popular destinations, also according to the schedule of flights scheduled for this weekend, in particular Greece (Santorini, Rhodes), Crete, Croatia (Split), the Balearic and Canary Islands, as well as Italian islands, such as Sardinia and Sicily. Immortal, as usual, European cities (Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Lisbon, Toulouse, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam), Great Britain, Scotland and Ireland.
Overall, for the majority of returning Italians (53%), the duration of the holiday was less than a week while for approximately one in three Italians (30%), the duration – according to a balance set up by Coldiretti/Ixe – is between one and two weeks, but there 3% walked out more than a month ago. The median duration was approximately ten days (9.8), and is still less than more than eleven days of the pre-pandemic period, even if it is higher compared to the previous two-year period marked by Covid. The average spending that Italians set aside for summer holidays was 645 euros per person, an increase of 11% compared to last year. 43% of tourists – confirms Coldiretti – in any case remained less than 500 euros of spending and 43% between 500 and 1,000 euros, 13% between 1,000 and 2,000 euros while only 1% exceeded this limit. According to Coldiretti, nearly a third of the shopping was for food for meals in restaurants, agrotourism, or on the street, but also for buying products often taken home as souvenirs. Holidays 2022 registered a clear preference for national destinations, but there is also a 23% of Italians, roughly one in four among those who travel, who decide to vacation abroad.