Cinque Terre: An Off-Peak Travel Season Experience

As my sister and I arrived at the train station at Monterosso al Mare, the first of the five Cinque Terre towns, we were greeted by crashing waves hitting high on the cliff sides. It was just past midnight on a warm December night but the moon lit up our path through the small town. The sound of the water echoed through the silence of the sleeping streets. Our Airbnb host welcomed us inside and showed us the ropes of our overnight home. After a long day of train changes and an overall six hour delay, we were happy to have a place to rest for the night.

The next morning we set out to begin our two-day Cinque Terre hike following the trail that wrapped around vineyards, coastlines, and of course the five villages on the acclaimed Italian Riviera. Leaving the Airbnb, I was expecting noisy activity in the town, a common trait of tourist destinations. Instead, I was struck with almost the same soothing silence from the night before, along with a couple of local families sharing a picnic near the rippling water’s edge.

We were visiting the Cinque Terre in the off-peak tourist season and it made all of the difference. As we climbed and hiked through the narrow dirt paths, we were greeted with the myriad of pastel houses that I had only seen in pictures from a college friend who had visited years before. Like many places, the pictures just didn’t do this destination justice. One thing seemed different. Unlike my friend’s pictures, we didn’t see a swarm of people as we looked down onto the approaching town.

When we made it down into Vernazza and stopped for lunch of a life-changing cheese and vegetable sandwich from a local cafe, we saw only a few other visitors pacing the streets. This scene, the one that I was lucky enough to experience, I soon learned is not common for tourists visiting the Cinque Terre.

We stopped at an Airbnb in Corniglia to spend the night and I talked with our host about the tourism patterns he saw. The Cinque Terre seemed far too beautiful and well-known to be empty during what I thought was such great weather. My host clued me in that their peak tourist season is in the summer and when those visitors arrive, they walk down the street shoulder-to-shoulder like a rookery of penguins. The streets in the town only appeared wide enough to support small groups of people, especially if the locals wanted to live normal lives during the peak season. I learned that the large influx of people in the summer was actually causing damage to the infrastructure like the stone roads in the town and a walking path near the water. This is just one of many cases where an excessive amount of visitors can cause a destination to be loved to death.

In towns reliant on tourism, like those part of the Cinque Terre, seasonality can be a big factor for economic viability. In the Cinque Terre, some businesses are overwhelmed in the summer and unable to accommodate the demand, while the same businesses in the winter may only have just enough visitors to stay open. The people I talked to in the next two towns on the coast, Manarola and Riomaggiore, shared the same sentiments as my host with growing concerns of too many visitors, but a simultaneous fear of losing their economic stimulation.

My off-peak season travel experience in the Cinque Terre was a positive one, filled with kind strangers willing to strike up a conversation, picturesque views that belong on a postcard, and craveable food (and limoncello or wine of course) in each town. The accommodations were less expensive than during the peak season and the restaurants allowed plenty of space for preferable seating and quick service. The hike itself through the five towns on the winding path brought sunshine and peaceful solitude. The only downside I found of hiking the Cinque Terre in the off-peak tourist season was that gelato shops were closed. That small price was worth the reward for the one-of-a-kind experience hiking the Cinque Terre in December.

How the Cinque Terre taught me to be a more Lovable Traveler:

1. Support local businesses (accommodations, food, in this case not gelato) especially when there aren’t as many close consumers

2. Fight a destination from becoming “loved to death” which may be accentuated (in some destinations) when too many people visit simultaneously in the peak season

3. Consider off-peak travel if that’s a way to better love the destination and the people there