As known for about a month, the Villages Valtur, symbol of excellence of Italian tourism in the world, are about to close.
The company, in fact, despite the steep increase in bookings, which stood on an exceptional + 108% only in the last three weeks, has requested the bankruptcy agreement by effectively opening the procedure of collective dismissal for 108 permanent employees and fixed-term 123, but putting at risk the 1500 jobs guaranteed by the induced.
The company is negotiating the return of individual accommodations and confirming that it is being done seriously, this being the case, this summer will not open villages of Capo Rizzuto, Favignana, Ostuni, Porto Rosa, Torre Chia, Simeri, Garden Club Toscana and Colonna Beach. And the activities of the winter villages Pila Marilleva, Sestriere and Principe di Marmolada will be interrupted.
In the meantime, requests for information from entrepreneurs, both Italian and foreign, have begun to arrive at the Ministry of Economic Development, interested in taking over the brand and management of the villages that have contributed in all these years to the growth of the Italian brand in the field. of high quality tourism. In this regard, Minister Carlo Calenda announced that he will meet the property in the coming days "to promote a continuity solution for the entire company complex".
A few days ago, during a meeting on the thorny affair, held in the presence of all the unions involved, the ministry reiterated to the company having to "engage directly in the search for an investor interested in keeping the company perimeter united and employment and also offers concrete prospects of continuity in the long run to one of the major Italian companies in the tourism sector and its workers ".
In this regard, Mise firmly underlined its "No to liquidation solutions for separate parts of the activities currently operating under the Valtur brand".
The common front is that of the unions that are referred to by the hand refer to the responsibility of the investor fund (the tour operator acquired two years ago by the Investindustrial group of Andrea Bonomi). Filcams-Cgil, Fisascat-Cisl and Uiltucs-Uil have reported the seriousness of the behavior of a company that develops mainly seasonal employment for about 1.500 people.
The alarm launched by the trade unions is that "the sale risk to` spezzatino 'materialized is fading with the start of the liquidation phase and it is unfortunately clear that there is no intention to safeguard the company perimeter of a company that represents Italy in the world and that in the South it represented a fundamental employment and economic resource ".
But what are these numbers produced by the unions?
The first data, perhaps the most significant, tells us that if Valtur were to close, Italy would lose over a million tourists a year.
Luca De Zolt of Filcams-Cgil stated that “In more than 50 years Valtur has hosted over 60 million tourists in its villages and in 2017 it hosted 1,1 million, with an average of 20% foreigners”.
Last winter, attendance rose by 20,1% and turnover by 24% and the previous summer by 19,3% and 32,6% respectively, but for Andrea Bonomi's Investindustrial fund all this is not enough.
Now everyone is looking at the table scheduled in a few days at Mise and in this regard, De Zolt always confirms "negotiations with interested parties", a hypothesis that keeps workers' hope of being able to "continue to do for another 50 years what we have done so far ".
Photo: Ansa