"Due to the high costs of electricity, our historic hotel chain is shut down after almost sixty years of uninterrupted activity". 

With these words Attilio Caputo, general manager of Caroli Hotels, told Agi about the difficult decision to interrupt all hotel and restaurant services for new customers, “honoring until expiry only existing contracts and those already stipulated”.

The hotel group has four structures between Gallipoli and Santa Maria di Leuca, 275 employees and operates in various other activities in the hospitality sector.

The closure "has already been forwarded to the prefecture of Lecce".

The electricity bills relating to last August for the four hotels of the chain reach a total amount of about 500 thousand euros.

The news fits into the wake of the crisis that is affecting Italian companies and businesses, bent by the energy crisis and the impossibility of supporting management costs while being able to provide work. 

A spy of what awaits around the corner and causes distress to hundreds of thousands of workers.

"Although we regret the disservice that we will create for guests, partners and suppliers,

the disproportionate and unsustainable costs, which have totally eroded profit margins,

make it impossible to guarantee the continuation of the business, while resorting to the opportunities offered by the credit system and implementation of photovoltaic systems, the installation of which has not yet been authorized ", underlines the hotel manager. 

Caroli Hotels, having started its own hotel business in 1966, can be considered a pioneering reality in the hotel hospitality sector.

"In further thanking our collaborators, who will, alas, be the first to be penalized by the situation that has arisen, we hope that a return to normality can create the conditions for a reopening", he concludes. 

Giancarlo De Venuto, president of the Lecce section of AssoHotel, sharing the

concerns of fellow hoteliers

launches an appeal.

"I invoke incisive policies and not palliative methods to prevent other hotel companies from throwing in the towel. We need to react immediately, to calm prices in a sensible way, to avoid the risk of having tourists but not having businesses where to welcome them",