(Rome) Deserted during the pandemic, Venice returned this spring to its traditional flow of tourists, leading the municipality to relaunch its mandatory reservation project this year for all visitors wishing to stroll along its famous canals.
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
“We are going to start with an experimental phase during which the reservation will not be compulsory, but optional,” Venice Tourism Assistant Simone Venturini told AFP on Wednesday.
This phase, whose launch date will be announced “in the coming weeks”, will be “accompanied by price incentives such as reductions on museum admissions”.
At the end of this experiment, the device, already in the cards for years, will become mandatory in 2023 and will be payable for day visitors, who will have to pay 3 to 10 euros ($4 to $13.50) . Those who sleep on site, already subject to the tourist tax, will be exempt.
This initiative is more topical than ever after an Easter weekend marked by a large influx: 100,000 tourists slept in the city each night, to which were added an average of 40,000 daily visitors on average, reminded Mr. Venturini.
This human tide caused long queues at vaporetto stops or in front of museums, while hotels were full.
Faced with this situation, the mayor of Venice himself sounded the alarm: “Today, many people have understood that booking a visit to the city is the right way to go, to arrive at a more balanced tourism”, highlighted Luigi Brugnaro in a tweet published on Monday.
“We will be the first in the world to undertake this difficult experiment,” he stressed. According to Simone Venturini, “it will be the first system in the world where a regional capital and not an archaeological site or a natural park tries to regulate access to the city and it is therefore very complicated! »
This system will make it possible to know in advance how many people will be present in the City of the Doges and “for example to program public transport services accordingly”, he illustrated.
In 2023, once booking has become compulsory, checks will be carried out, for example at the bus and train stations, the two main access points to the queen of the lagoon.
However, Venice will not be able to impose a quota of daily visitors because of the principle of free movement of people, but the modulation of the amount of the tax according to the influx will make it possible to encourage tourists to choose the less frequented days.