Suffocated by tourists, Venice is trying a world first experiment

A major change will await tourists on Thursday when they get off at the train station in Venice: ticket inspectors will be responsible for checking that they have the mandatory entry ticket on busy days in the City of the Doges, notes APF.

With this world first, the city hopes to curb over-tourism by forcing day-trippers to pay five euros to walk its famous canals.

“The aim is to find a balance between tourism and the city and its inhabitants (…) We need to reduce the impact of day tourists on certain days. On certain dates, it is too high and this creates stress for the city,” explained tourism delegate Simone Venturini in an interview with France Presse.

In front of the elegant Santa Lucia station, the main entry point to the city, a ticket office has been set up to help tourists who do not have this new ticket in the form of a QR code, also available online.

An experiment made in the world premiere

Venice thus becomes the first tourist city in the world to impose an entrance fee like an amusement park, at a time when anti-tourism movements are multiplying, especially in Spain, prompting the authorities to take measures to reconcile the well-being of residents with an essential economic sector.

It remains to be seen whether Venice will succeed in its endeavor, despite its modest price and the absence of a cap on the number of visitors.

Ashish Thakkar, a tourist of Indian origin living in Florida, was skeptical: “If I’m coming from abroad, I don’t mind paying 5 euros (…) I don’t think there will be much difference.”

For the delegate for tourism, the idea is “first of all to discourage local tourism from the inhabitants of the Veneto region, who can visit Venice whenever they want”.

Even Mayor Luigi Brugnaro admitted in early April that “it’s an experiment”, but one that will no doubt be carefully studied by other major tourist cities around the world.

Venice is suffocated with tourists at the peak of the season

Its city, one of the most visited in the world, has already banned giant cruise ships from its historic center.

In peak season, 100,000 tourists stay overnight in Venice, in addition to the tens of thousands of daily visitors, compared to the roughly 50,000 residents of the city center, a number that is steadily decreasing.

At this stage, however, the Venice experiment remains very limited: for the year 2024, only 29 peak days are affected by this new tax, which therefore starts on Thursday, a public holiday in Italy, and applies almost every weekend from May to in July.