‘Will Russians sunbathe next to Ukrainians again? I do not think so’

It’s only early June, but the mercury is already quickly climbing above thirty degrees in Rimini, the most famous Italian resort on the Adriatic coast. With military precision, the already well-tanned Mauro Vanni (58) arranges the umbrellas and sun loungers on the stretch of beach that he and his family have been managing for 25 years. Private beach managers are a regular fixture in Italy. Almost 60 percent of the beaches are not freely accessible; tourists can only sunbathe and swim if they rent a spot.

“For 18 euros a day you get a parasol and two sun loungers from us,” says Vanni. “A price”, he calls it himself, because those 18 euros also include the playground, beach entertainment and the hydromassage bath.

Despite the beautiful weather and the hordes of Italian tourists heading out over the long weekend, Vanni is very concerned. Like many others, he fears that he may soon lose his beach permit. “A consequence of the Bolkestein directive,” he sighs, although the beach manager is especially angry at its own Italian government. According to the directive, services in Europe should be liberalized in order to stimulate competition. After years of delay and wrangling between Brussels and Rome, the Italian government has now decided that the beach licenses will be put up for auction in 2023. Vanni fears he may lose his family business and investment next year. “What if a large international investor presents itself, and perhaps wants to buy up the entire coast? Italian family businesses like ours can’t compete with that.”

On top of the worry that this might be his last summer as a beach operator after 25 years, comes the war in Ukraine. In recent years, Rimini has grown into an important ‘hub’ for tourists from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, Rimini 97,244 tourists from Russia, 10 percent more than a year earlier. The Russians then overtook the Germans (78,538) in Rimini. Restaurants soon offered their menus in Italian and Russian, the outlet mall of the neighboring city-state of San Marino hired Russian-speaking staff, and the four- and five-star hotels of Rimini did the same.

Popular holiday destination

But on the beach of Rimini these days you only hear the language of Dante. Just a few signs with the beach rules in Cyrillic script recall the pre-pandemic summers, when this northern Italian seaside town was still a popular Russian holiday destination.

After Covid, this is another setback for the tourism sector.

“This summer should have been the big comeback for domestic and foreign tourism in Rimini, a province that, in terms of the economic added value that tourism creates per inhabitant, in Italy only the province of Bolzano has to take precedence”, says the president of Rimini’s hotel sector Patrizia Rinaldis (61), a small lady with a rusty head of curls who has been running a family hotel close to the beach for 37 years.

The hotel sector on the Adriatic coast had hoped to make up for lost revenues from the past two Covid summers this year. Then, according to Rinaldis, hotels in Rimini suffered losses of more than 30 percent. As last summer, hotels in the seaside resort will again this year mainly have to rely on domestic tourists and visitors from Germany. Last summer Russians couldn’t travel to Italybecause the Sputnik vaccine was not recognized there. This year, the war in Ukraine is keeping beachgoers from Eastern Europe at home.

In other places in Europe, tourism is increasing again. Also read: The tsunami of party tourists is back. What now?

For the airport of Rimini the war in Ukraine is a complete disaster. The airport, named after Rimini’s most famous son Federico Fellini, had chosen to mainly target visitors from outside the EU. With this business model, the small airport hoped to tap into an important niche market. Until Putin decided to invade Ukraine in February, nine Russian airlines flew to Rimini, accounting for about 40 flights from Russia a week. “Feel free to call us the most Russian airport in Europe,” says airport director Leonardo Corbucci (52). Another ten flights a week from Ukraine were added.

Deserted terrace

The director of the airport allows plenty of time for a conversation on the deserted outdoor terrace of the deserted departure hall, which offers a beautiful view of the rock of San Marino. The shops in the hall, with typical ‘Made in Italy’ products that are very popular with Russians, are all closed. For Corbucci, a businessman with experience in finance, this is his first experience in the aviation sector. He is managing director of Airiminum, the private manager of the airport since 2018, which took office after a bankruptcy.

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Patrizia Rinaldis, hotel manager

The beginning was certainly not a bed of roses, because barely two years later the pandemic broke out. “A catastrophe for a tourist airport like ours,” says Corbucci, who speaks of a 91 percent loss in 2020 compared to the previous year. And just as the airport was counting on the big return of tourists from outside the EU, Putin started a war in Ukraine, and overnight dozens of flights from Russia and Ukraine were canceled.

Corbucci does not hide it: “Had someone told me beforehand that a meteorite would hit, I would have rather signed for it. That would have been easier than this war.”

Russian business partners

On the beach of Rimini, the few foreign tourists prefer not to react to the war in Ukraine. Leonardo Corbucci does. “We are in 2022, this is no longer the time to wage war.” He calls the war a tragedy “for the Ukrainian people, but also for families in Russia”. In recent years, Corbucci has invested heavily in his business contacts with Russia. At Rimini airport, he even opened an office to promote tourism in Saint Petersburg. He still maintains weekly contact with his Russian business partners, who promise him that they will return to Italy as soon as this war is over.

The economic ties between Italy and Russia are strong. Patrizia Rinaldis, the president of the hotel sector, therefore believes that it will soon be ‘business as usual’ again. Money does not stink and has no nationality. “Both the Ukrainian and Russian people are undergoing this war,” Rinaldis said. “And as soon as it’s allowed again, the Russian tourists will come back to Rimini and be welcome again,” says the hotel manager. She calls it hypocritical to claim otherwise. “Russian tourists, who support the economy with this, would suddenly no longer be welcome? But we think it’s still okay to buy gas from Russia?”

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi wants tourism to return stronger than before the pandemic. Also read this opinion piece by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer: It seems as if I wrote Grand Hotel Europa for nothing

At nightfall, Mauro Vanni closes the umbrellas on his beach. His day is over. Vanni is of a completely different opinion, he never believes that soon the Russians will again sunbathe on the beach of Rimini, next to Poles, Ukrainians and Hungarians. The deep wounds that are being left now, Vanni believes, will leave considerable scars. “On an economic level, but certainly also between peoples,” says the beach manager. “Agreed, Putin went to war, but many Russians support him in that. Who will trust the Russians after this?”