The physical impact of tours in Pompeii
Pompeii tours are becoming as popular as sightseeing in Rome and it's getting easier to move from Rome to Pompeii to tour both in one day. Ten million people visited Rome from overseas in 2022 while three million made the trip to the famous ruined city. THREE MILLION? That's an insane amount for what is a small seaside town today.
Pompeii scavi (archaeological area) is a huge open space covering around 65 hectares, therefore the physical impact of tourism is significantly less than that of the Colosseum in Rome, for example. The Flavian Amphitheatre occupies just two hectares in Rome city centre, encircled on three sides by lanes of traffic and a frantically busy metro station, ergo physical impact is real. Restrictions on how many people are allowed inside the Colosseum at any one time are becoming more oppressive year on year - tickets are extremely hard to come by. Before 2019, Colosseum tickets were easy to book in advance, even next day. Today, the opposite is true. Our friends and associates in Rome are descheduling their Colosseum tours or even closing them down permanently.
Turning back to Pompeii, the site is better placed than anywhere in Rome to accommodate large numbers of visitors, but in the fullness of time, restrictions will surely come.
The question must be asked, what are tour operators in Pompeii doing about tourism impact on the territory that keeps them in a job? There are perhaps a dozen established Pompeii tour operators, "established" meaning they've been around for at least a decade and have accumulated a large number of reviews. Ten times that number send groups in by the bus load. Every day, all year round. Let's have a look at a few examples and dig deeper, as it were, into their activities on the ground.
Buses and coaches that deliver day trippers to Pompeii are bottom feeders, the lowest of the low. Environmentally catastrophic, chaotic and unsightly. Ideal for the idiot class of tourists for whom Pompeii is nothing more than a bucket list checkbox. A blanket ban on buses and coaches within a 2km radius of Pompeii would be a smart move. Rome, meanwhile, has suffered enormously from the physical impact of bus tours and the same needs to be done there too.
Bus tours apart, a more insidious force is eroding the archaeological heritage of Pompeii. Greed.
Several Pompeii tour operators serve near 50,000 travellers each per year. It's a depressing example of the tourism-fascism model that has come to blight every archaeological and historical destination of major interest in Italy. 10% of that number would be more than enough for any small tour operator in Pompeii to thrive and help protect the archaeology of Pompeii with honesty and integrity.
Aggressive payment terms (upfront for every booking) and next to no trading space for partners (same prices as to the public) are as common in Pompeii as dust, Askos Tours being the prime culprit. Is this what Pompeii tourism has become? We say to every tour operator in Pompeii: STOP running so many daily departures with an average of 25 people per "small group" and max to 10 pax. Delete your obsession with money. In this way, they will significantly reduce their deleterious footprint.
In Pompeii Tours works responsibly and with absolute respect for the archaeological heritage of Pompeii, a modus operandi at odds with the status quo.
Pompeii scavi (archaeological area) is a huge open space covering around 65 hectares, therefore the physical impact of tourism is significantly less than that of the Colosseum in Rome, for example. The Flavian Amphitheatre occupies just two hectares in Rome city centre, encircled on three sides by lanes of traffic and a frantically busy metro station, ergo physical impact is real. Restrictions on how many people are allowed inside the Colosseum at any one time are becoming more oppressive year on year - tickets are extremely hard to come by. Before 2019, Colosseum tickets were easy to book in advance, even next day. Today, the opposite is true. Our friends and associates in Rome are descheduling their Colosseum tours or even closing them down permanently.
Turning back to Pompeii, the site is better placed than anywhere in Rome to accommodate large numbers of visitors, but in the fullness of time, restrictions will surely come.
The question must be asked, what are tour operators in Pompeii doing about tourism impact on the territory that keeps them in a job? There are perhaps a dozen established Pompeii tour operators, "established" meaning they've been around for at least a decade and have accumulated a large number of reviews. Ten times that number send groups in by the bus load. Every day, all year round. Let's have a look at a few examples and dig deeper, as it were, into their activities on the ground.
Buses and coaches that deliver day trippers to Pompeii are bottom feeders, the lowest of the low. Environmentally catastrophic, chaotic and unsightly. Ideal for the idiot class of tourists for whom Pompeii is nothing more than a bucket list checkbox. A blanket ban on buses and coaches within a 2km radius of Pompeii would be a smart move. Rome, meanwhile, has suffered enormously from the physical impact of bus tours and the same needs to be done there too.
Bus tours apart, a more insidious force is eroding the archaeological heritage of Pompeii. Greed.
Several Pompeii tour operators serve near 50,000 travellers each per year. It's a depressing example of the tourism-fascism model that has come to blight every archaeological and historical destination of major interest in Italy. 10% of that number would be more than enough for any small tour operator in Pompeii to thrive and help protect the archaeology of Pompeii with honesty and integrity.
Aggressive payment terms (upfront for every booking) and next to no trading space for partners (same prices as to the public) are as common in Pompeii as dust, Askos Tours being the prime culprit. Is this what Pompeii tourism has become? We say to every tour operator in Pompeii: STOP running so many daily departures with an average of 25 people per "small group" and max to 10 pax. Delete your obsession with money. In this way, they will significantly reduce their deleterious footprint.
In Pompeii Tours works responsibly and with absolute respect for the archaeological heritage of Pompeii, a modus operandi at odds with the status quo.
Behind every ruin in Rome and Pompeii is a tour operator owner rolling around in piles of money. The value of education through tourism cannot be understated, however, business ethics have long since been flattened by a stampede of cash cows.
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