Rome - Giusy Lanetti is a young woman from Italy and she loves travelling.
“But it is not easy to be light-hearted about going around the world in times like these,” she told Xinhua.
According to tourism experts cited by the Italian press earlier this week, the high alert against terrorist threat following the attacks in Paris and across the world has affected the tourism industry in Italy.
Slightly fewer citizens were travelling abroad and were choosing instead to visit cities in their own country after terrorist attacks killed 130 people in Paris in last November, according to Italian travel and tourism industry association Fiavet.
Tour operator association Astoi Confindustria Viaggi said that Italians were tending to avoid big cities and were opting for smaller destinations within Europe, with a decline in journeys to Egypt, France, Tunisia and Turkey.
“I am planning a trip to London with some friends of mine in April, though my mother has become very anxious recently and she would not like me to go,” Lanetti went on saying.
“Yet I decided that I will leave. Of course I am aware of the terrorist threat, but what shall we do to avoid the risk? It could happen everywhere and in any moment,” she concluded.
On Thursday, the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, a man wearing a fake explosives vest and wielding a butcher's knife was shot to death by police in the French capital. “I definitely want to stay in Italy, I do not feel safe travelling abroad,” a middle-aged man, Davide Monti, told Xinhua.
“I would love to visit other parts of the world, but this is not the right time, we will wait for the situation to calm down,” agreed his wife.
However, major cities in Italy, where an unprecedented number of 6 300 troops, plus police forces, have been deployed at central venues according to figures of the interior ministry, have also become dangerous in the eyes of many travellers.
Despite heightened security measures, Rome and Milan have been listed by the United States as being among the potential targets of militants. Many false alarms have contributed to discourage visitors in recent weeks.
Rome, where the Catholic Jubilee kicked off on Dec. 8, seems to have suffered the most, with the number of tourists down around five percent between Christmas and New Year's Eve compared to the same period in 2014, said the hotel operators' association Federalberghi.
“Following the Nov. 13 assault, our telephones remained silent for two weeks and our sales stopped, the situation was tragic indeed,” Noemi Rubini, a manager at the Gattinoni Travel Network, which counts nearly 30 travel agencies in northern and central Italy, told Xinhua. Fortunately, she added, the flows of travellers have then gradually resumed.
“Of course there is still concern for certain destinations that used to be very frequent in the past, such as Egypt, and in this moment we are not inviting our clients to go to countries such as Yemen or Libya, but many are still travelling to the Middle East and Africa. Oman was a very popular destination for the New Year's Eve, for example,” Rubini explained to Xinhua noting, however, that the Gattinoni Travel Network is a well-established group.
“Things may go worse for smaller agencies,” she pointed out. “However, the recent terrorist attacks have also proved to be unpredictable everywhere in the world. What is important is travelling conscientiously while keeping a positive attitude, this is what we encourage our clients to do,” Rubini said.
Xinhua