As the summer season unfolded amid a heated debate over the high cost of vacations, specifically concerning sunbed and umbrella rentals, Legacoop Romagna asserts that the Riviera Romagnola continues to offer “an accessible quality-to-price ratio at the beach.” The cooperative association believes the recent public discussion has, over the weeks, been characterized by “interventions and tones that sometimes seem to us not entirely appropriate.”
According to the association, beach services “constitute a minimal part of the overall expense of a holiday,” and statistics on the cost of a single day do not reflect the discounted rates typically applied for weekly, monthly, or seasonal umbrella rentals. Furthermore, Legacoop Romagna states, “from our observatory, we can affirm that Romagna still stands out for an accessible and supportive beach offering.” This offering includes not just umbrellas and sunbeds but also high standards of safety, cleanliness, service quality and variety, and professional hospitality. This is attributed to a unique cooperative model in Italy that ensures a diversified offering for all budgets and cost containment for guests.
However, the association also highlights a more pressing concern. While it finds the current debate on the relationship between holiday costs and tourist numbers “not very useful, at least at this moment—the accounts, as experience teaches, are settled at the end of the tourist season”—it simultaneously warns that it is “useless to deny” the growing uncertainties threatening the future of the coastal tourism model. These uncertainties are linked to the fate of business concessions and the Bolkestein Directive. “The beach is an essential element of our tourist offering, but the risk is that this model is at a dead end,” the statement reads.
Consequently, Legacoop Romagna urges that “we consider it important and urgent for the Region to convene, at the end of the season and together with Municipalities and other relevant public bodies, a ‘General Assembly’ of beach tourism.” This summit would include all cooperative, economic, and social representatives to “set in motion a great unified effort to protect and revitalize this extraordinary asset.”