ROME (ITALPRESS) – Seventeen million Italians will hit the road for the holidays, one million more than estimated in November. More than six in 10 will stay within national borders. However, they will be more fragmented vacations, with more departures and a tendency to move outside the canonical periods and for shorter periods of stay. 25% say they will move both within Italy and abroad, thus taking multiple trips. Twelve percent will leave exclusively for foreign destinations, especially on New Year’s Eve and Epiphany, a figure that has risen sharply since 2022. These are the main data emerging from the focus on Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Epiphany 2025 of Italians by the Confcommercio Tourism Observatory in collaboration with SWG using a CAWI method on a sample composed of 1,049 Italian citizens between 18 and 80 years old interviewed between December 2 and 9, representative of the population by gender, age, areageographic and municipality breadth of residence.Among those who will not take vacations, 20 percent link this choice to economic reasons, 13 percent for lack of available vacations. The total planned spending, net of some uncertainty still present, is more than 8 billion euros, with the highest values referring to New Year’s Eve, which represents the highest point of the holiday “trident” both as average spending per person (390 euros) and as total number of travelers (almost 9 million). Forty-four percent of Christmas travelers will go to the homes of friends and relatives. Favorite destinations include big cities or art cities (23 percent), seaside resorts (22 percent), or mountain resorts (17 percent). Central to the choice of destinations is the need to rest and the desire to taste typical products, confirming the close connection between tourism and the food and wine offerings of the territories. For abroad, the ‘top-ten’ destinations see Spain in the lead, followed by France and Great Britain. On New Year’s Eve, the queen of vacations, 27 percent will choose a big city or a city of art, while 23 percent of departing Italians will opt for the mountains. More than 1 in 4 Italians will choose a hotel for their New Year’s stays. Among those who choose to take a vacation with at least 5 overnight stays, 1 in 4 will go abroad, with France 17%, Spain 13% and Greece 12% among the favorite destinations. Even for the Epiphany holiday, short stays will prevail (52% of those leaving do not plan to stay more than 2 nights). Among destinations, one in four travelers choose big cities or art cities and one in five choose mountains. In strong growth is the percentage of those who choose a foreign destination for vacations of at least 5 days (29 percent compared to 15 percent in 2022). “Tourism confirms itself as an engine of development to create wealth and new employment,” says Confcommercio President Carlo Sangalli. “The forecasts are encouraging for 2025 as well, but there remains concern about the difficulties of other major sectors such as automotive and clothing, which could penalize economic growth.
– Photo: Photogram Agency -(ITALPRESS).
