Venice to Trial Entry Fee, Visitor Cap

Facts

• Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro has announced that the Italian city will test daily visitor limits and entrance fees starting next spring to regulate the flow of tourists during its busiest tourist season.¹
• The scheme will mandate visitors to reserve their entry to the city's historic areas online and pay €5 ($5.45) to get a QR code that will be scanned at specific entry points.²
• The limitations will be in effect from 8.30 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time for a total of 29 days, including most weekends from April 25 to mid-July 2024.²
• According to Brugnaro, the goal of the experiment — which he suggests will be financially unprofitable initially — is to make Venice 'bookable.'³
• However, the 'first-of-its-kind experiment' exempts workers, students, residents, Venetian-born visitors, and travelers who have bookings for hotels or other accommodations.⁴
• The program comes after Venice, a UNESCO World Heritage site, barely avoided being added to the agency's danger list earlier this year due to the damage mass tourism was causing to its ecosystem.⁵

Sources: ¹Al Jazeera, ²Reuters, ³US News & World Report, ⁴USA Today and ⁵Euronews.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by National Geographic. Roughly 90% of tourists visiting Venice are what the city calls 'hit and runs' — day trippers who frequently arrive by bus or boat from nearby locations. These tourists congest the areas surrounding the major attractions. An entry fee and visitor cap could decongest Venice and make it livable.
• Narrative B, as provided by The Conversation. A €5 fee isn't big enough to persuade tourists to visit Venice at less crowded times and reduce tourism numbers significantly. However, the day-tripper 'contribution' program will make the city more of a theme park and force residents who depend on tourism to flee.