Venice is going to broaden its tourist entry fee system in 2025, almost doubling the number of days visitors will have to pay to see the lagoon city, and hiking the price for last-minute arrivals, officials said on Thursday.
In a world first, the Italian destination introduced a 5- euro charge in April for daytrippers arriving on particularly congested days, hoping the levy would help thin the crowds.
Mayor Luigi Brugnaro stressed that the tax aims to help the city and its citizens battle overtourism and avoid huge influxes of visitors during crowded holidays and weekends.
The initial scheme, which was watched closely by other global tourist hotspots, covered 29 days over a four month period. This will be lifted to 54 days next year, over the same April-July window.
The new tax will be applied every Friday through Sunday and on holidays from April 18-July 27 of next year, for a total of 54 days. That’s almost double the number of days it was applied this year. Tourists who don’t make reservations up to four days in advance will pay 10 euros ($10.80) instead of the usual 5 euros ($5.40).
The tax will be in force during peak hours, from 8.30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Exemptions are granted to residents, Venetian-born visitors, students and workers, as well as tourists who have hotel or other lodging reservations.
“Venice has gone from being the city most exposed to and criticised for the phenomenon of overtourism, to being the city that is reacting to this phenomenon the earliest and most proactively on the global stage,” said Simone Venturini, the city councillor responsible for tourism and social cohesion.
He told a news conference the system was still in an experimental phase. He said places popular with tourists, including Japan’s historic city Kyoto and the Spanish island Formentera, had been in touch to ask about the scheme.
Critics have said the payment system failed to slow the flow of tourists, but Mayor Brugnaro said it was too soon to judge, with precise data only available this year.
He added that Venice did not want to shoo people away, but rather encourage visitors to rethink their dates.
“We are not against it (tourism). We just believe it can somehow be spread out,” he said, warning that the city would hand out fines in 2025 for people without a pass – something it had threatened to do in 2024, but did not.
“Venice is the first city in the world that tries to manage the problem of overtourism. We obtained important results,” the mayor said.
“Data offered by the control room show that on average during the period of implementation of the fee, we had about 7,000 more tourist entries than in previous years,” said Giovanni Andrea Martini, an opposition councilor. “This shows that the access fee is not at all a system able to manage the flows.”
In all, 485,062 people paid for a day pass this year, raising 2.25 million euros. This covered just some of the costs of the system, Brugnaro said, and was not aimed at raking in cash for the city coffers.
The world-famous lagoon city has long grappled with overwhelming influxes of tourists, with estimates based on cellphone data of 25 million to 30 million annual arrivals of day-trippers and overnight guests since 2020. The city’s population is only about 50,000, according to the mayor.
The day-tripper tax, which was delayed by the pandemic, was heralded by UNESCO member states when they decided against recommending to place the city on a list of endangered world heritage sites. The city also escaped inclusion on the list two years earlier when it imposed a cruise ship ban down the Giudecca canal and through St. Mark’s Basin. (AP/Reuters)
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