The summer of 2024 of the never-solved problem of beach concessions is taking on frankly grotesque contours, the product of a policy that does not decide, but in doing so only decides to exasperate people’s spirits. And so on the one hand there is the announced and unlikely strike of the beach and lido operators, who are entrepreneurs and therefore it is not clear to whom they would cause economic damage by closing sunbeds and umbrellas in the peak of the season.

On the other hand, there are provocative occupations of beaches with towels, shovels and buckets placed in handkerchiefs of sand between the orderly rows of umbrellas, coincidentally of VIP beach resorts like the ever-cited Twiga of Flavio Briatore. Actions, these, let’s say, that tickle the lowest part, the social anger most easily tele-driven, against the rich people of the moment. These “raids” are just getting the applause of those who – perhaps more for a blast of tropical heat, than for anything else – secretly dream of defacing the side of a Ferrari, just for the pleasure of doing a big prank, but realizing a moment later that they have solved nothing.

The tariff scandal

All this, however, is the result of a single problem, apparently simple: the scandalously low rates at which the Italian State grants its coasts to those who want to make a (legitimate) tourism business out of them. The State should demand more, obtain the right compensation for that concession and transform that income into services for citizens. Beach operators should pay what is due without too much fuss, understanding that there is no abstract right not to pay a fair fee, and that despite a thousand convoluted reasonings the root issue remains the same: a rent on the one hand unfortunately not requested and on the other in any case not paid. It seems simple, but it is not.

Free guests also on VIP beaches – by C. Treccarichi

In this summer of 2024, the debate on beach concessions is taking on a new and funny pauperist color, perhaps in the wake of having defaced the “Ferrari-Twiga” and beaches of equal or lower level, but still expensive. A somewhat hypocritical turn, and one that has nothing romantic or with the flavor of “the good old days when the beaches were wild and we still had fun”. In fact, this debate on fair compensation for the use of a public good is being transformed into one on a supposed right to have beaches with less tourist facilities, stretches of sand that are illusorily free only because there are no gates at the entrance, even if there is nothing inside.

Modern tourism and its opportunities

With the necessary premise that the aggression to the free beach must be stopped and that it is up to the State to protect this asset from seaside speculation, with equal honesty it must be said that the current beach resorts are certainly not all Twiga, and if they are sold out on August 15th it is not determined by those who have no alternatives if they want to go to the beach, but by those who demand that the beach is not just sand-sun-sea. As if the great majority of former mass tourism in the 21st century did not demand increasingly higher, more personalized services – “experiences” as experts in this economic sector have been saying for over twenty years – and were not consequently willing to pay more for quality, perhaps in the only week that one allows oneself to rest and a few pampering sessions.

So everyone can go to the beach without paying – by C. Treccarichi

And if you look closely, if so many tourist destinations today compete on equal terms with Italy, and often surpass it even if, conspicuously, they have fewer natural attractions, fewer coasts, fewer places of art, it is because they have fully understood the lesson of selling a tourist experience, and not a sunbed + umbrella service. Thinking of something different today would only mean going backwards, not considering the coast as the necessary place of the most flourishing, greenest and most “distributive” Italian industry of its advantages among the population, often small coastal communities that guard their territory all year round. In short, let’s not throw away modern tourism and its opportunities together with beach concessions. The free sea must not lead to a poor sea.

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