TourHound chairman Laurence Hicks and his partner spent lockdown on the Italian island, and are starting to see it emerge.
My partner and I are fortunate enough to own a property on the beautiful Costa Saracena in Sicily, which we use as a getaway from the hustle and bustle of London.
Nearby Gioiosa Marea is a quintessential Sicilian town which relies very much on agriculture and tourism for its economy, the latter affording much welcome employment to local people through the summer.
We rent out the property via Airbnb through some of the summer months but, as we both have residency in Sicily, we decided in May to substitute lockdown London for emerging out of lockdown in Sicily, where we felt a little safer from the risk of catching Covid-19 and enjoy a better quality of day-to-day life.
Sicily is an autonomously-governed region of Italy and only 282 of Italy’s near 35,000 Covid-19 related fatalities were here, mainly thanks to the local politicians who strictly managed access to the island. We underwent a 14-day quarantine, supervised by the local health authority, and were tested before officially being allowed loose in the community.
Pre Covid-19, our Airbnb bookings filled the property pretty much back-to-back from Easter until mid-September. However, those bookings quickly disappeared as events unfolded across the globe. Bookings are slowly starting to materialise, but we’re now obliged to undergo a strict Covid-19 cleaning protocol.
Italy’s government subjected the nation to a swift and hard lockdown with little movement permitted and pretty much any journey outside the home certified, documented and controlled by local police. You can therefore understand people’s delight as measures were lifted after three months of virtual home confinement.
It was interesting to witness how this community, so reliant on tourism, was waking up to a new post-Covid way of life and how quickly local businesses adapted to the long-awaited opening of shops, restaurants, cafes, bars and hotels. Local infrastructures and transportation seemed to be activated quickly with beaches, museums and attractions gradually reopening.
Italy is now seven weeks out of lock down and while there is still a level of caution in the worst-hit areas in the north, like Lombardy and Veneto, life in the south and particularly Sicily appears to have made huge but cautious strides towards normality.
Our favourite local bar, one of many in the heart of the town, is bustling with locals and our cappuccino and cornetto ritual is served by waiters wearing masks (complete with the bar’s logo) who maintain a polite distance. Few customers in bars are wearing masks as it is not compulsory. There are hand gel containers at entrances and polite notices reminding patrons about maintaining social distance. There are footprints on the floor in case you don’t know how far one metre is.
In restaurants, waiters are all wearing masks and trying to keep as reasonable distance as possible and while serving at the table is hard people understand and accept the circumstances. Tables are set out and distanced in adherence of the rules and all the kitchen staff wear gloves, masks and head covers.
On the beaches, the behaviour of locals and the few tourists now arriving is disciplined with organised ‘lidos’ distancing sunbeds and umbrellas. Interestingly, all the amenities like showers and toilets are fully functioning. Even the speed boat hire business is operating.
I know most of the local hotel owners personally, and many are now opening to tourists but under government guidelines. Their capacity is guided by the public spaces they have and rules about occupancy of space vs number of people is limiting most to around 50-60% occupancy. However, having visited some friends’ hotels, I was amazed at how they had adapted to the measures and how pleased they were to be able to earn something on the back of the Covid-19 crisis.
We visited Taormina, which is probably the most popular tourist area on the island with Etna as its backdrop, its famous Greek theatre, beautiful bay of Giardini Naxos and narrow, historic, hill town streets bustling with shops, bars and restaurants. Without the presence of mask-wearing folk, you would hardly imagine a major pandemic swept across the globe a few months earlier. Street life was evident, restaurants and bars busy and local attractions open.
As airlines resume their flights into Sicily from the UK and other European countries, there is an air of optimism that tourism will, once again, drive the local economy. It’s clear Sicily is ready to accept tourists and the locals have adapted and managed their respective businesses to balance their statutory post Covid-19 obligations and regulations with their own personal charm and character that we so love in the Italian and in particular the Sicilian culture.