When you’re a visitor in a tourist hotspot, it’s common to find yourself assailed with offers and propositions from restaurant waiters, tour operators and ticket touters in the street.
It can be uncomfortable and frustrating – even to the point of feeling like harassment.
Now, the Italian island of Capri has decided to crack down on this behaviour in a bid to make the traveller experience more pleasant.
The chic destination has already capped tour group numbers and banned guides from using loudspeakers and umbrellas to reduce disruption for other visitors and residents.
Capri receives up to 50,000 daily visitors in peak season, far exceeding the resident population of roughly 13,000 to 15,000.
Capri bans businesses from soliciting tourists on the street
Tourists on Capri often find themselves accosted by business owners offering services like island tours, boat excursions and discount menus at restaurants and bars.
Mayor Paolo Falco, who has long been a proponent of better tourism management, says this has “a detrimental effect on the perception of the island”.
“I know that there are tourists who, from the moment they disembark from the boat to arriving at the entrance to the funicular [which connects the port to the town above], have been stopped more than five times with offers of trips and restaurants,” he told Italian media. “This insistence has an unpleasant effect.”
A new ordinance from authorities, updated from last year, has now addressed this practice.
“Commercial operators, owners of tourist service agencies and their employees are absolutely prohibited from carrying out customer procurement activities through intrusive and insistent methods on public or publicly used land,” it states.
Falco added: “We understand the need to convey a promotional message, but we do not compromise on the need for this to be done with the grace and elegance befitting Capri.”
The new regulations underline that tourists on the island should be able to move around with ease, without “being continually approached and stopped by economic operators engaged in any form of intermediation or promotion of goods and services on the public road, including unsolicited street advertising, and using brochures, flyers and maps for this purpose”.
Business owners found violating the new rules face administrative fines ranging from €25 to €500.