All ship are going to sink

The eye-catching attraction — and eyesore — is the capsized Costa Concordia, all 591 feet of it lying just outside the entrance to the port, an ever-present reminder of the disaster that took 32 lives three months ago.

The question for most people on this tourism-dependent island, which attracted 23,000 visitors last year, is whether the wreck will be good for business or bad. The answer will not be known for several months, but from early indications, it seems to be both. Early bookings for lodging show a 20 percent drop for the summer season, while day trips seem to be up considerably, though there is no official count.

“We live in total uncertainty this year,” said Paolo Fanciulli, owner of the Bahamas hotel in Giglio Porto. On the night of the accident, hundreds of passengers found refuge at the hotel, along with one contentious guest: the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, who is now under house arrest near Naples, accused of manslaughter, abandoning ship and causing a shipwreck.

“Bookings for the summer season are slow,” Mr. Fanciulli said. “We get e-mails from all over the world asking us about the relic, but these people do not make reservations. At first, some of us thought that this unexpected fame would have brought many tourists over, but for now curiosity has been only a one-day phenomenon.”

News reports beamed around the world after the cruise ship hit a submerged rock with 4,229 people aboard engendered misimpressions that are still lingering, tourism officials say. Even though salvage experts pumped out the vessel’s 500,000 gallons of fuel oil, many tourists seem to be concerned about the threat of pollution, and officials say people are also afraid of running into hundreds of emergency workers and officials, though only a few dozen remain.

Despite efforts to allay those fears, the only tourists who have shown increased interest in visiting the island are the day-trippers who come to be photographed with the half-sunken ship in the background. One of them, Virginie Breton, a 34-year-old Frenchwoman, decided during a long tour through Italy to stop there for a day. “It’s a bit weird, but don’t people go see the site of the World Trade Center?” she said. “Coming here is the same thing. This is part of history.”

As the ferry approached the Giglio harbor recently, passing right by the 114,500-ton luxury liner, Ms. Breton stood on a bench on the deck to get a better look. Other passengers leaned over the side with their iPhones or throwaway cameras, while others made the sign of the cross.

“We really just came to make the kids happy,” Debora Vano, 35, said while her two boys, 8 and 13, trotted around the deck to find the best angle to take a photograph of the ship, a souvenir to show their school friends in Milan. “We wanted to go to the thermal baths or to Pitigliano, but the kids wanted to see the ship.”

On a walkway near the rocks that affords the closest vantage point to the vessel, a steady stream of people with backpacks marched between the souvenir shops and the seafood restaurants. Few souvenir vendors have complained about that, but other people have.

“For now, the crowds of journalists and rescuers have helped our economy more than the one-day tourists,” said Rosalba Brizzi, 50, the manager of Bar Fausto, which sells items like sandwiches, espresso and ice cream. Day-trippers “do not buy much, and this year they have even less money to spend because of the crisis.”

One of the visitors, Marcelo Giorgetti, 49, a plumber from Grosseto, said, “We’ve been to Giglio before, but we came to see the monster this time.” He was lying on the smooth granite rocks facing the wreck with his wife, his sister and a couple of friends. “I keep on thinking that there might still be more bodies buried in there,” he said.

In the weeks after the accident, 17 bodies were recovered, and 13 more have been retrieved in the intervening months; the remains of five were identified on Tuesday. Two passengers are still unaccounted for and are presumed dead.

Some Giglio residents remain optimistic about the coming months, like the president of the local tourism bureau, Samantha Brizzi. She thinks that Giglio should find ways to take advantage of the period until the Costa Concordia is removed, which is expected to happen next year.

The tourism bureau is planning to enhance its holiday packages, adding stays and weekends over the winter — a potential revolution on an island that loses more than 500 of its almost 1,500 residents from November to Easter.

“We should take this as an opportunity,” she said. “After all, not even Coca-Cola could have afforded such worldwide publicity.”

Others remain skeptical. “I am very worried, even if the situation is more reassuring than it was in January,” said Fabio Mattera, the manager of Da Meino, one of the oldest restaurants in Giglio Porto. “I really can’t wait for October to come. We will then see if my business sinks like the Concordia.”