Out on the streets and out of control

Italian hoteliers are fed up with prostitutes openly touting for business in and around city hotels. But tourist chiefs sometimes take a more philosophical attitude, as Ben Walker found out on a visit to Bologna.

Bologna's thriving prostitution trade is unlikely to be reined in by the authorities - at least, not while Piero Piergiovanni is in charge of tourism for the city.

While hotels complain that the situation is out of control, Piergiovanni denies that the presence of prostitutes soliciting in front of hotels on major roads, and around the business and exhibition centres, is damaging the city's image. "It's the oldest profession in the world," he says. "We could spend time trying to give them another job, but it's a useless battle when they are earning a6,200 [£3,800] a month."

He adds: "We take an Amsterdam-style view. No one says to us that it's disgusting. Fortunately, they are not very young girls, as in Brazil or Thailand."

Hoteliers rarely agree. Davide Gambetti feels lucky that his hotel, the 101-bedroom Amadeus, is a kilometre away from the prostitutes' favourite beat, around the 143-bedroom Holiday Inn. "To be a hotel manager there is hard," he says, "because many clients will not even consider going there. They don't want to sleep in such a place. It's damaging to the hotel's image."

Lucio Zanardi, conference and banqueting manager at the Holiday Inn, says that two areas behind the hotel had to be gated off to keep prostitutes out. He says that there was a daily battle to keep them away, but they continued to solicit around the hotel's entrance.

The general manager of the 244-bedroom Sofitel hotel, Virginio Aouad, says that prostitution is "out of control", and he wants to see greater efforts to clamp down on the organised crime behind it.

Aouad has played his part in "cleaning up" the Sofitel's location near the railway station. Through an agreement with the city council, the hotel has taken over the management of a public garden, directly behind the hotel, which had fallen into misuse. Bar staff had previously drawn the curtains to conceal the goings-on from the view of guests. The project cost a114,000 (£70,000) and took four years to complete. "You'd need to be a magician to get the city council to do something fast," says Aouad.

Nevertheless, Aouad recognises that many improvements have been made in the past three years. Bologna's status as European City of Culture 2000 saw the number of hotel nights rise from 1,309,182 in 1999 to 1,467,939. Although average occupancy dipped slightly last year, to 64% from 67% in 2000, all the city's hoteliers felt that it was crucial to keep up the momentum and push for the creation of a single tourism office working to prevent clashes among trade fairs, conferences and sporting events.

Gambetti says: "Bologna has been a closed, self-referential city for far too long. We have missed so many opportunities. Why doesn't Bologna appear in travel brochures? The city is now opening up. It needs to be recognised around the world."