Passport chaos: damage to agencies for 150 million euros. Fears for Easter and the summer season
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Despite the intervention of two ministers – that of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi and that of Tourism Daniela Santanché – to try to unblock the situation, the “passport chaos” has not yet passed. Indeed, it risks worsening in view of the Easter holidays and the summer.
The latest estimates on a phenomenon that has persisted for months now – with serious damage to travelers but also to tourism businesses – come from a report commissioned from the IRCM Research Institute by Vamonos Vacanze, an Italian tour operator specializing in group holidays. Trips canceled due to delays by the police headquarters and (above all) by the booking mechanisms would have so far amounted to around 100 thousand, corresponding to 180 million euros of lost sales for the Italian travel agency system.
The appeal to the ministers Piantedosi and Santanché
The agencies were the first to raise the alarm, already in recent months, and in January Fiavet-Confcommercio had written to Minister Piantedosi asking him to intervene and resolve a situation that risks slowing down the excellent recovery recorded by the sector starting from last year. after the collapse due to the two years of pandemic and the airport chaos of last summer. The agencies associated with Fiavet, explains the president Giuseppe Ciminnisi, denounce waiting times of between two and six months for the issue or renewal of passports.
“We know for sure that Minister Santanché is working to solicit solutions that lead as soon as possible to the solution of a problem that is becoming too burdensome for our businesses – says Ciminnisi -. The situation is very different depending on the regions, but on average we record a high percentage of canceled trips due to the failure to issue a passport, especially by those who have had to leave unexpectedly, typically people who travel for work”.
Leopard spot situation
The delays are largely due to digital booking systems, which set appointments months later. Fto-Confcommercio, the association of Tour Operators, has calculated that the most complex situations are on average in the cities of the North. In Milan, for example, the first available appointment is in Rho, on May 26th. In Prato it is better to organize yourself for the Christmas holidays, given that the first “slot” is only on December 13th. In Udine it is necessary to wait until 10 August, nor are things better in Naples (7 August), Brescia (17 July), while in Turin and Bologna no appointments are available. Rome “shines” with an April 3, but it is clearly an unsustainable situation.
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