Promotional video from Calabria drives northern Italians up the wall
In Italy, many people in northern Italy are extremely upset about a tourism promotional video from Calabria in southern Italy. The outrage, which has been expressed on television and online, stems from the sharp decline in tourism in the Mediterranean country due to the coronavirus crisis.
Although nerves are already frayed in many vacation destinations, some people in charge of the Riviera dei Gelsomini coastal area at the tip of the boot have had a video made in which the north is maligned. Images of mass tourism and industrial chimneys in the north are compared with empty, bright sandy beaches and romantic cultural sites in the south.
The three-minute film had already been on YouTube for a few days. Then the president of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia, scolded the commercial. "To write in the subtitles that people are dying from particulate matter here: it's not right," said the right-wing Lega politician. The video insults the country and its people. Other voices from northern regions joined in. Tourism operators from the Riviera dei Gelsomini were also quoted in Italian media with critical words.
The maker of the commercial, Italian-Swiss Klaus Davi and his agency, expressed his surprise in Milan. "It was just a small web video that we made without any money for the area," he told the news agency DPA on Thursday. He had used the instrument of comparative advertising, but there had been similar things before. He suspects that it was only the intervention of the well-known regional politician Zaia that made the debate so big.
The coronavirus pandemic almost brought Italy to a standstill for months from March. It started in the rich north. The Lombardy region is still the worst affected. However, the overall figures are also high in Emilia-Romagna, Veneto and Piedmont. The poor south has been largely spared major outbreaks. The authorities are now only reporting around 200 new infections per day in Italy and around 20 deaths - or fewer.
Holidaymakers from the EU have been allowed back into the country since the beginning of June - but the number of holidaymakers is still manageable. (SDA)
