Be quick to keep the hotels closed. Bernabò Bocca, Federalberghi president, does not say it explicitly but in essence it transpires from his words: “We need an immediate intervention, for the government that will be installed, but also for the one still in office: to find a solution for the cost of procurement energy must be a top priority. There must be an intervention as for Covid ». Superbills of electricity and gas file all hotel margins and, absurdly, make it economically more convenient to keep closed. This is what the Friulian hoteliers and their colleagues in Salento have decided, while others are thinking of taking this path. “The case of the hotels in Salento will not be the only one, in the next month we will see many others, the situation for our sector is dramatic and we cannot afford to wait until 2024”. Everything revolves around the mega bills whose weight has multiplied in the last year. “It is six times that of 2019 – reports the president -. When the high season is over and the months in which the turnover could cover the expenses are over, many will not make it anymore “. Bocca gives the example of his group, Sina Hotels: “We spend 100 thousand euros a month for each hotel, in practice we burn the income of this year with the extra energy costs from July to the end of the year”. Hence the protest and the appeal: “We cannot ask companies to work at a loss and we cannot say that we must be patient, because in 2024 we will be autonomous, at that date we have to get there and it is not easy for a company” . Political intervention is urgently needed, Bocca insists, and European intervention is needed as was the case for the Covid pandemic. “Otherwise in Italy we risk having a million unemployed in the streets because there will be many companies forced to close. Italy is the weak link in the chain, the Germans have had the government’s super investment, the French have nuclear power and we remain with the match in hand, also because we cannot know when this crisis will end. It is not possible that this is the case: politics intervenes and does it immediately ».
