“Capri is becoming a dormitory for tourists” | Overtourism

Famed for its turquoise beaches, stunning views and cove-lined coastline, the Mediterranean island of Capri has been a tourist paradise since the early years of the Roman Empire.

Unlike the times of the empire, when emperors made it their exclusive playground, Capri now attracts visitors from all over the world, who clog its narrow streets, fill the squares and block the beaches during the hot summer months.

The island receives 16,000 tourists per day during the high season, exceeding the number of 12,900 residents. The majority are day visitors, but more and more tourists are spending the night on the island, with the number of houses becoming exclusively holiday accommodation continuing to increase. Which brings its inherent problems.

“Capri is becoming a dormitory for tourists,” says Teodorico Boniello, president of the local consumer association. “There are more people arriving than we can handle and families are unable to put down roots because they don’t have the money to stay.”

REUTERS/Ciro De Luca

The inhabitants of Capri depend on visitors for their subsistence, but the advance of mass tourism runs the risk of transforming their sites, surrounded by perfect landscapes, into artificial spaces devoid of local life.

Some Italian cities and islands are starting to retreat, albeit gently.

Venice last week became the first city in the world to introduce an entry fee for visitors during peak periods, Florence banned new holiday rentals in the city center and the Cinque Terre park on the Italian Riviera began to charge 15 euros for access to a popular coastal walking route to combat overcrowding.

Capri has doubled its own visiting fee from 2.5 euros to 5 euros, which visitors pay when taking a ferry from nearby Naples or Sorrento from April to October.

“We are trying to persuade more people to visit Capri during the winter,” Capri Mayor Marino Lembo told Reuters, sitting in his office with the smog of Naples hovering in the distance.

But that fee is unlikely to dissuade tourists from traveling to an island that has more than four million photos tagged on Instagram, attracting an endless stream of visitors eager to add the same sights to their social media pages.

Furthermore, local inhabitants claim that this measure will do nothing to alleviate the housing crisis that forces many essential workers, including teachers and doctors, to live on the mainland.

REUTERS/Ciro De Luca

Tourism, market economy and doubts

Antonio De Chiara, 22, wakes up every morning at 5:20 am in his hometown, near Naples, to catch the 7 am ferry, which takes 50 minutes to reach Capri. Around 400 other passengers join him as he crosses the bay.

As soon as they leave Naples, those on a tight schedule start lining up in the aisles to ensure they are the first to get off the boat and get a seat on one of the few small buses that climb the hill into the city. Latecomers risk a long wait.

“It would be great to live on Capri, but it’s very difficult. Even if I managed to find a house, the rent would eat up my entire salary,” says De Chiara, who recently found a job as a child therapist on the island.

Stefano Busiello, 54 years old, is a mathematics teacher at a high school in Capri, but lives in Naples and has been moving back and forth for 20 years. “I’ve never even tried to find a house here. I’ve never been able to afford one and things are getting harder.”

Only 20% of his school’s staff live on Capri, he says, and everyone else arrives on ferries – a daily routine that means most of his colleagues don’t stay more than two or three years before transferring to schools across the country. continent.

Roberto Faravelli, who runs accommodation near the port, says people like him might be willing to rent their properties to workers if the region offered incentives to plug the gap in lucrative holiday rentals.

“The Government must encourage owners to offer long-term rentals. What we lack is someone who will try to solve these problems.

But Mayor Marino Lembo does not expect the authorities to intervene: “It’s regrettable, but it’s the market economy working.”

rEUTERS/Ciro De Luca

An uncontrolled market?

Holiday rental platform Airbnb lists more than 500 properties on Capri, up from around 110 in 2016. This is just the tip of the iceberg, with local families renting their properties during the summer months on unregulated portals.

“This short-term rental market is chaotic. There is no control,” says Lembo.

Despite obvious resentment over the lack of viable housing, Capri has yet to see the kind of protests seen elsewhere – such as Spain’s Canary Islands, where thousands of people took to the streets this month to demand limits on tourist arrivals.

With the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, tourism has increased across Europe as travelers from around the world try to make up for lost time.

Italy registered a near-record number of overnight stays in 2023, according to data collected by the Center for Tourist Studies in Florence, and was the fifth most visited country in the world in 2023, with tourists attracted by its picturesque villages and cities rich in culture. .

In the morning, during high season, a fleet of ferries dumps up to 5,000 visitors into the small port of Capri in just two hours. Everyone wants to go up to the city of Capri and the smaller Anacapri, but the buses can only carry 30 people at a time and the funicular 50.

“In the summer, it’s easy to wait two or even three hours to climb the hill. The piers are full. Nobody can move,” says Boniello, playing videos on his cell phone of people crowded together.

Lembo acknowledges the problems, but denies that tourism is ruining an island where his ancestors lived for centuries. “I don’t agree with those nostalgic who say that Capri was more beautiful 100 years ago. At that time, there was misery and poverty. Now there is wealth, and that is thanks to tourism.”