Europe feels US financial crisis in absence of American visitors

American Express has shuttered two decades-old offices in major tourist cities. Taxi drivers are wailing that Americans and their big tips are nowhere to be seen. Clerks at the upscale clothiers along Via dei Condotti are helping buyers from Russia and China -the only holiday travelers found sifting through their racks one day last week.

The number of American visitors to Italy has fallen about 20 percent in the past year, according to tourism agencies - a painful slide for a country that saw American tourism shrivel after 9/11 and never fully rebound.

This latest drop, however, indicates that the travel industry has been hurt by the global slowdown - and Italy has company in its misery. Britain this month is reporting a sizable downturn in visitors in the last three months of 2008. Overall, the number of foreign visitors dropped 5 percent from 2007, but the numbers from North America fell the most-  12 percent. Data maintained by the Bank of Italy are revealing: The number of American visitors fell from 2.5 million in 2006 to 1.75 million as of September 2008.

The tourism loss has a ripple effect, agents pointed out. A 20 percent dip in Americans can mean as much as a million admissions lost in museums and tourist sites, by some estimates. Matteo Marsotto, chairman of the National Tourism Agency, told reporters in December that the data are not encouraging. "There are signs that we may close with a loss in revenue," Marsotto said. The exchange rate can be blamed in part - the greenback is anemic to the euro - but tourism brokers should better assess what could lure Americans, he said. Religious tours and value-for-money promotions are a couple of options.

The missing Americans are reported here as part of a rising tide of woe in Italy and across Europe. The closing of American Express offices in Piazza San Marco in Venice and near the Palazzo Pitti in Florence was detailed as the end of an era by L'espresso magazine - even though company officials in Rome said the shuttered stores were a matter of cutting cost on rent.

Still, the Venice and Florence offices are gone and, agents there said, the change came in part because Americans are traveling less around a country where prices have risen noticeably since the entry of the euro in 2002. Italy's proprietors don't offer the same deals found in other Mediterranean spots - and Americans are clearly counting their pennies, they said.

The ledgers at American Express showed some evidence of thrift: The amount of money Americans exchanged at the Rome office fell more than 3 percent during 2008. "The American people used to fly here and then they'd travel by train to Tuscany, to Venice, a lot of places. Even in large groups," said Sabina Presta, who heads the tourism office near Rome's Spanish Steps. "Now they come, they stay for a day or two. … We just don't see the traffic."

On nearby Via dei Condotti, most clerks smiled ruefully when asked about the long-gone big American spender. "Where are they?" said Andrea Mosso, a salesclerk at Prada. "We used to see families. Now, nothing. Those who spend are the Russians and Chinese." "It's a tough time for the euro and a tough time for the dollar," said Marco Inguscio of Gucci as he handled a sale for a Japanese client. "We're hoping things will change."

But Italy's economy minister, Giulio Tremonti, last week likened the deepening financial crisis, which has ravaged credit supplies in Europe, to being on the losing end of a bad video game.

Source: TravelDailyNews