The New Year's Eve concerts attract, but only the Sardinians.

«People certainly don't come from abroad to see fireworks or attend Zucchero or Mengoni concerts», cuts Gian Mario Pileri, president of Fiavet Sardegna , the travel agents association, bluntly.

Big names from the Italian music scene will perform in Sardinia: Ligabue in Alghero, Zucchero and Salmo in Olbia, Mengoni in Cagliari, Renga and Nek in Sassari, Mahmood in Castelsardo .

Events that will contribute to developing what Pileri defines proximity tourism, " a purely local tourism, made by Sardinians for Sardinians ". Without these concerts, however, the president of Fiavet observes, "perhaps many Sardinians would have decided to leave".

«With New Year's Eve – continues Pileri – we don't do business, apart from a few Sardinians who return home to their families». When leaving Sardinia, however, there is "some slight increase in traffic departing from Cagliari airport , with charters to Istanbul, Spain and Malta full".

Traffic in transit at the three airports on the island is good: in Elmas from 22 December to 7 January 200 thousand passengers are expected between arrivals and departures on 230 thousand seats offered , in the two northern airports the flow is over 100 thousand people during the Christmas long weekend on 129 thousand places offered. Movements in ports are instead in line with those of last year.

If airlines laugh, especially at the return of Sardinians to their families, hotels cry. The situation in hotels during the Christmas period is "insignificant" for the president of Federalberghi Sardegna Paolo Manca . «There is no volume recorded that could justify extraordinary openings, it is all an internal movement of Sardinians who choose to spend Christmas or New Year in a particular hotel, but none of the large accommodation facilities that closed at the beginning of November have opened for this period or has decided to increase the accommodation capacity ." Reservations from abroad or from the rest of Italy "are very few".