Authorities in Venice have been accused of turning the famous city into a “theme park” with the introduction of the much-discussed entrance fee for day trips.
Venice is the first major city in the world to implement such a scheme. The €5 tax, which comes into force on Thursday, is aimed at protecting the Unesco world heritage site from the effects of over-tourism, discouraging day trips and, according to the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, making the city “livable” again.
But several local committees and associations have scheduled protests for Thursday, arguing the tax will do nothing to solve the problem.
“I can tell you that almost the entire city is against this tax”Matteo Secchi, who runs Venessia.com, an activist group of local residents, told The Guardian. “You cannot impose an entry tax on a city; all this tax does is turn it into a theme park. It’s a bad image for Venice… I mean, what’s this, we’re in the mood for jokes?”.
Once the center of a powerful maritime republic, the main island of Venice has lost more than 120,000 inhabitants since the early 1950s, driven out by a number of problems, but mainly by a heavy emphasis on mass tourism, which has caused the population to be dwarfed by the thousands of visitors crowding the squares, bridges and narrow alleys.
The entrance fee, which is only required for access to the historic center of Venice, can be booked online and will apply on 29 peak days, mainly weekends, from April 25 to July 14, in a first phase , trial.
Residents, commuters, students and children under 14 are exempt, as are tourists staying overnight in the city.
Day-trippers will be required to purchase their ticket online and will then receive a QR code. Those who do not hold the code will be able to buy a ticket on arrival with the help of local guides, who will also carry out random checks at five main arrival points, including Santa Lucia station. Those caught in the city without a ticket risk fines between 50 and 300 euros.
The local council of Venice stated that 5,500 people booked a ticket for April 25, a national holiday in Italy, bringing 27,500 euros to the city’s budget on the first day. Although Brugnaro denied it was a for-profit initiative, he promised to lower local taxes for residents if the scheme was successful.
Federica Toninello, who heads ASC, a tenants’ association, said: “They think this measure will solve the problem, but they haven’t really understood the consequences of mass tourism on a city like Venice. First of all, 5 euros will not deter people. But day trips aren’t the problem; things like the lack of affordable housing are… What we need are policies to help residents, for example, create rules to limit things like Airbnb.“
The local branch of Arci, a social-cultural association, said it would distribute “symbolic passports” to tourists on Thursday as a way to highlight the “questionable constitutional legitimacy” of the measure in terms of restricting free movement. The tax, Arci also said, would be “ineffective in limiting mass tourism”generating at the same time “an unequal treatment between different categories of visitors”.
But others agree with the measure. “It will serve to regulate tourist flows, which at certain times of the year risk damaging a fragile city like Venice”, Tommaso Sichero, president of the Venice shop owners association, told a local newspaper.
Despite the criticism, Venice tourism councilor Simone Venturini said the administration felt “very relaxed” about “this venture”. “For the first time since Venice has been targeted by mass tourism we are trying to do something”, he said.
While some have raised questions about privacy as people have to enter their personal details into the booking system, Venturini said the tool would be useful for “establishing more precise figures on the number of visitors”.
Publisher: DC
