Winter Tourism: A Shimmering Light for the Italian Mountains

By Massimo Terracina

What a sad look to watch the Alpine ski world championship with no crowd. Cortina is experiencing the most frustrating event ever, first in ski history with no crowd to cheer for the athletes. A huge celebration for the “white ski circus” held only on the TV screens.

Italy has beautiful and amazing ski areas along the Alpine arch. Cortina is known as “the Queen of Dolomites”. Sud Tirol is full of wonderful ski areas, along with Veneto, Trentino, Val d’Aosta and Piemonte.

The ski industry is really important and last season was shut down due to the pandemic.

If 2020 was a disaster, with a little bit of a reprise in summertime vacations, 2021 winter started with really deep uncertainty.

Yesterday, the “green light” from the Technical Scientific Committee arrived to grant the opening of the ski lifts from February 15, but only in the ski areas of the regions mapped in the yellow zone (the ones with lower spread rates). 

Therefore, the protocol developed by the regions was largely accepted, but not for the ski areas situated in the orange zone, which will remain closed. 

The experts committee rejected the proposal submitted: let the lifts reopen also in the orange area, but with a capacity reduced to 50% on cable cars, gondola lifts and chairlifts, and the mandatory use of Ffp2 masks. Those rules, anyway, must in any case be adopted everywhere in case of reopening to the public.

The approved protocol provides some ground rules as to a maximum number of daily skipasses (including season tickets) depending on the size and type of the lifts that could be sold. The online purchase of tickets is also foreseen to avoid queues and, therefore, gatherings. Police guarantee the flow of customers to accomplish such measures.

Federfuni Italia, the federation that brings together some 150 ski lift managers, expressed "satisfaction" according to the decision taken by the Technical Scientific Committee. It must be considered a real turning point for the “mountain economy”.

The reopening is designed as “a first refreshment that will allow an entire economic chain to be able to restart someway. Many seasonal workers will be able to resume their activity, thus removing the specter of a real economic-social crash that would have affected an important part of the Italian territory”, said a Federfuni spokesman.

The green light must be ratified by a new decree to be signed on February 14, at the expiry of the current one. And the new government led by the appointed new Premier, Mario Draghi, will also see this matter through on the table. The removal, if the conditions are right, of the ban on travel between regions will also be decisive for the economic recovery. Another unknown factor will be the snow, which in some parts of Italy is (together with tourists) the great absentee of the current season. 

All this is going on while in South Tyrol, the Autonomous Province of Bolzano - already “dark red” according to the EU - has decided to arm itself. From February 8 and for three weeks, shops will be closed, teaching will take place remotely and there will be a ban on moving from one municipality to another.