(Venice) Tourism in Venice “must change” if we want to protect this fragile and endangered city, listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, its mayor declared on Thursday, welcoming the smooth start of paid entry to five euros in his city.
“Today we spent more money than we took in, but […] it’s a way to make people understand that we have to change and therefore dilute the visits” throughout the year, declared Luigi Brugnaro. “People understand that,” he assured.
Faced with the damage caused by overtourism and the lack of appropriate measures to curb it, UNESCO had threatened to place the city on the list of “world heritage in danger”.
To avoid this, the city committed in September to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, meeting in Riyadh, to put in place a visitor flow management system this year.
For this world premiere, Venice sold some 15,700 tickets, according to official figures released at the end of the day. There is no cap on the number of tickets available.
These tickets, which are in the form of QR codes sold online or on site, must be presented to controllers stationed in particular on the station square, the main access to the City of the Doges.
“The objective is to define a new system for managing tourist flows and to discourage day tourism in Venice during certain periods,” the town hall recalled on Thursday.
“I think it’s good because it will perhaps slow down the tourist numbers in Venice,” agrees Sylvain Pélerin, a French tourist who has been coming regularly to the lagoon for 50 years.
In front of Santa Lucia station, the main entry point into the city, a ticket office has been set up from scratch to help tourists without the precious ticket.
For the mayor, “the greatest satisfaction was to see people approach (the checkpoints, Editor’s note) waving their QR code”. “These people understood” what was at stake, he rejoiced.
“An experiment”
Venice is the first tourist city in the world to impose an entrance fee like a theme park, while movements hostile to overtourism are multiplying, particularly in Spain, pushing the authorities to act to reconcile the well- be residents with a crucial economic sector.
The mayor recognized in early April that it was “an experiment”, which will undoubtedly be closely followed by other major tourist cities around the world.
Venice, one of the most visited cities in the world, has already banned giant cruise ships from its historic center, whose swarms of passengers must also show their credentials.
At peak attendance, 100,000 tourists sleep in Venice, in addition to tens of thousands of daily visitors. Compare to the approximately 50,000 inhabitants of the city center, which continues to depopulate.
At this stage, however, the experiment remains very limited in scope: for 2024, only 29 busy days are affected by this new tax, which will be applied almost every weekend from May to July.
Many exemptions
This tax also only targets daily tourists entering the old town between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. local time. They can download their QR code on the dedicated site (https://cda.ve.it/fr/), available in English, Spanish, French and German, in addition to Italian.
A fine of 50 to 300 euros ($73 to $440) is planned to punish tourists who try to slip through the cracks, even if local authorities have said they want to favor persuasion over repression.
Tourists sleeping at least one night on site are exempt and receive a free QR code of their accommodation. Many other exemptions are planned: under 14s, students, etc. On Thursday, around 97,300 people benefited, according to the town hall.
But this new measure is not unanimous among Venetians, some seeing it as an attack on freedom of movement and a further step towards the museumification of their city.
“We are not a museum or a nature reserve, but a city, we should not pay” to access it, protests Marina Dodino, a retired fifty-year-old who is part of a local residents’ association, ARCI Venezia.
A demonstration at the end of the morning not far from the station brought together some 300 people in a good-natured atmosphere, who marched behind a large banner saying “No to the ticket!” Yes to housing and services for all.”
This post is “the apotheosis of the museification of Venice […] We are in a city where Airbnbs monopolize all the accommodation, where the mayor could regulate tourist rentals, but does not do so,” laments Federica Toninello, 32, spokesperson for a local association, for AFP.
“If we want to solve the tourism problem, we have to start with the housing problem,” she concludes.