Day-trippers will have to pay €5 to visit Italian city under scheme designed to protect it from excess tourism
Authorities in Venice have been accused of transforming the famous lagoon city into a “theme park” as a long-mooted entrance fee for day trippers comes into force.
Venice is the first major city in the world to enact such a scheme. The €5 (£4.30) charge, which comes into force today, is aimed at protecting the Unesco world heritage site from the effects of excessive tourism by deterring day trippers and, according to the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, making the city “livable” again.
But several residents’ committees and associations have planned protests for Thursday, arguing that the fee will do nothing to resolve the issue.
“I can tell you that almost the entire city is against it,” claimed Matteo Secchi, who leads Venessia.com, a residents’ activist group. “You can’t impose an entrance fee to a city; all they’re doing is transforming it into a theme park. This is a bad image for Venice … I mean, are we joking?”
I find it surprising that it’s unpopular with the residents
My (admittedly naive) understanding was that tourism keeps increasing and there’s no way to build more space, so Venice has become overcrowded and is potentially at risk of sinking?
Sure it’s not great to have to impose a restriction like this, but there aren’t many other ways to reduce the number of people going to a place that they want to go to.
Other than the poor optics of charging entrance as if it’s a theme park, the fee might also embolden some of the more obnoxious tourists in behaving like they would at an ACTUAL theme park rather than how they would as guests in a “real” city, in order to “get their money’s worth”.
Yeah, people definitely have a tendency to act entitled just because they’ve paid money.
It reminds me of this story from Freakonomics:
The economists decided to test their solution by conducting a study of ten day-care centers in Haifa, Israel. The study lasted twenty weeks, but the fine was not introduced immediately. For the first four weeks, the economists simply kept track of the number of parents who came late; there were, on average, eight late pickups per week per day-care center. In the fifth week, the fine was enacted. It was announced that any parent arriving more than ten minutes late would pay $3 per child for each incident. The fee would be added to the parents’ monthly bill, which was roughly $380.
After the fine was enacted, the number of late pickups promptly went… up. Before long there were twenty late pickups per week, more than double the original average. The incentive had plainly backfired.
Interesting story. $3 is worth it for a few minutes of extra child care.
I wonder if they had charged $1 a minute that the parent was late, if that would have nipped the problem in the bud.
I heard that one school (maybe the same school?) had success with a “three strikes and then you find yourself another school” policy.
Wow, that seems unnecessarily harsh.
Who said anything about fines? If anything, your example supports my comment 🤷
Yeah, I was agreeing. I’ll reword my post to make myself clear.
Ah ok 🙂
Thing is, €5 isn’t all that much. I’m not sure who this is going to deter other than shoestring backpackers and people who fly RyanAir. I’d fully expect that price to increase in the future.
My guess is that the term “residents” actually refers to greedy business and hotel owners which are the reason this rule is necessary in the first place.
Residents, commuters, students and children under the age of 14 are exempt, as are tourists who stay overnight.
So they are just attempting to bully the worst kind of tourists out which is totally fair.
Yeah it reads like they do want less tourists but don’t agree with the way they are handling it. Maybe a pride thing, with the theme park comment.
Maybe the inland residents the ones that are protesting… what we call Venice doesent look to have a lot of residents apart from some particular places
I suspect it’s more unpopular with souvenir shop owners than anyone else.
This article is surely taking a group of people and holding them as being representative of the populace as a whole. In fact, much reporting indicates that locals are sick of tourists and tourists, especially on cruise ships, are actively destroying the environment. Venice has already banned cruise ships from certain parts as a result. I call bullshit on this article.
the obvious solution is to only let in a set number of people per day. This is just a nickel and dime scheme.
This does kinda feel like when Cartman had his own amusement park that nobody was allowed to go to
The fee is only charged on certain days, I believe a total of 29 days this year, to dissuade people from visiting on those days that are considered to be the busiest.
They should honestly increase the cost to something more akin to a theme park. There isn’t that much value that the city brings in beyond it being a tourist destination.
Maybe go with circus prices instead since they both charge you money to see a bunch of clowns.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The €5 (£4.30) charge, which comes into force today, is aimed at protecting the Unesco world heritage site from the effects of excessive tourism by deterring day trippers and, according to the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, making the city “livable” again.
Once the heart of a powerful maritime republic, Venice’s main island has lost more than 120,000 residents since the early 1950s, driven away by a number of issues but predominantly a focus on mass tourism that has caused the population to be dwarfed by the thousands of visitors who crowd its squares, bridges and narrow walkways at the busiest times of the year.
The entrance fee, which is required only for access to Venice’s historic centre, is bookable online and will apply on 29 peak days, mostly weekends, from Thursday until 14 July as part of its trial phase.
Federica Toninello, who leads ASC, an association for housing, 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.
The local branch of Arci, a cultural and social rights association, said it would distribute “symbolic passports” to tourists on Thursday as a way of highlighting the “dubious constitutional legitimacy” of the measure in terms of restricting free movement.
While some have raised questions over privacy due to people having to feed their data into the booking system, Venturini said the tool would be useful in “providing more precise figures on visitor numbers”.
The original article contains 648 words, the summary contains 245 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
You have to pay 5€ to visit a giant sewer city with no trees in sight and two people per every square meter. A bargain.
Shush you, Venice is magnificent. Wouldn’t want to live there but it’s an extraordinary place absolutely worth experiencing. Ancient, labyrinthine, palaces and churches everywhere, it’s like stepping into the Renaissance.
Good point. But I enjoyed “shush you” the most
I’m upvoting you for adding to the conversation even though we have different opinions. Sadly, people don’t understand how the moderation system is supposed to work.
You never been, obviously.
You don’t care for culture, gotcha. Now do Disneyland!
“Venice is the first major city in the world to enact such a scheme.”
London has been charging an entry fee for it’s downtown core for years now.
https://www.visitlondon.com/traveller-information/getting-around-london/congestion-charge
That’s only for vehicles. It isn’t the same thing.
It’s essentially the same thing. Too many people are coming, so charge them a fee. The only reason Venice is per person and not per vehicle is that it’s an island, it’s not like you can drive there.
It may seem like that to the average american, but nobody with more than 1 braincell drives in London. Even when your the congestion charge, you’re basically always better off walking or taking the Underground.
This prevents cars, not people. They’re very much not the same thing.
You can drive in Venice. Well, you could if you’d removed all the tourists.
The London thing does not apply to pedestrians
There is a difference in intent.
The congestion charge in London and other cities is just for cars whole the cities generally provide good mass transit across the toll line.
Venice is charging an admission fee to all tourists no matter how they arrive. Given how low the fee is, all it will probably do is raise revenue for the local government.
It’s essentially the same thing. Too many people are coming, so charge them a fee.
No, it’s not the same thing. Cars don’t have a place in the cities, cities are for humans.
