If rain spoils your vacation, this Italian island will give hotel refunds
Iliana Magra 21.05.2019 TOI
Hordes of tourists visit the Italian seaside with dreams of dipping into cobalt-blue waters and sunbathing for hours under glorious skies. Only one thing can spoil those idyllic holiday plans: rain.
But beginning this month, the Italian island of Elba, off the coast of Tuscany, started offering tourists an unexpected guarantee: Hotels will refund guests if it rains.
Elba, the largest island in the Tuscan Archipelago, is perhaps best known as the place where Napoleon spent almost 10 months in exile more than two centuries ago. The island started the good-weather initiative, called “Elba No Rain,” this year: Guests receive a refund for one night if it rains for more than two hours on any given day during their stay.
If it rains every day for more than two hours at a time, then the whole stay will be free.
The offer isn’t entirely new — a few hotels on the island already had similar initiatives in place — but encouraging all of the hotels on Elba to make the guarantee is intended “to minimise commercial damage due to weather forecasts,” Claudio Della Lucia, an associate tourism manager for the island, said .
One hotel refunded a day’s booking to guests last year, but there have been no payouts since the islandwide initiative officially started two weeks ago, Della Lucia said.
Tourists may well ask: Just how much rain does Elba get?
“In the last five years, in April, May, we had only two days with more than two hours of rain during the daytime,” Della Lucia said.
Even without the compensation offer, there are plenty of options for activities on Elba that do not require a clear sky. There are Napoleon’s villas, the two residencies where he briefly lived in exile starting in 1814; an aquarium; the mineral mines on the west and east of the island; and the Vigilanti Theater, among other attractions.
“The island’s rain refunds will stop at the end of May and begin again from September 15 through to the end of October. They will start anew in May 2020,” Della Lucia said. NYT NEWS SERVICE
A TAN OR YOUR MONEY BACK
Iliana Magra 21.05.2019 TOI
Hordes of tourists visit the Italian seaside with dreams of dipping into cobalt-blue waters and sunbathing for hours under glorious skies. Only one thing can spoil those idyllic holiday plans: rain.
But beginning this month, the Italian island of Elba, off the coast of Tuscany, started offering tourists an unexpected guarantee: Hotels will refund guests if it rains.
Elba, the largest island in the Tuscan Archipelago, is perhaps best known as the place where Napoleon spent almost 10 months in exile more than two centuries ago. The island started the good-weather initiative, called “Elba No Rain,” this year: Guests receive a refund for one night if it rains for more than two hours on any given day during their stay.
If it rains every day for more than two hours at a time, then the whole stay will be free.
The offer isn’t entirely new — a few hotels on the island already had similar initiatives in place — but encouraging all of the hotels on Elba to make the guarantee is intended “to minimise commercial damage due to weather forecasts,” Claudio Della Lucia, an associate tourism manager for the island, said .
One hotel refunded a day’s booking to guests last year, but there have been no payouts since the islandwide initiative officially started two weeks ago, Della Lucia said.
Tourists may well ask: Just how much rain does Elba get?
“In the last five years, in April, May, we had only two days with more than two hours of rain during the daytime,” Della Lucia said.
Even without the compensation offer, there are plenty of options for activities on Elba that do not require a clear sky. There are Napoleon’s villas, the two residencies where he briefly lived in exile starting in 1814; an aquarium; the mineral mines on the west and east of the island; and the Vigilanti Theater, among other attractions.
“The island’s rain refunds will stop at the end of May and begin again from September 15 through to the end of October. They will start anew in May 2020,” Della Lucia said. NYT NEWS SERVICE
A TAN OR YOUR MONEY BACK
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