For four months at the beginning of the year, the Italian city of Venice piloted a surcharge system for day-trippers. Visitors who did not stay overnight were charged €5 ($5.40) on certain days when there was the most congestion, including weekends and public holidays.
The fee was trialled to discourage visitors from arriving on crowded days, addressing the problem of over-tourism in Venice.
In 2023, 5.7 million people visited Venice, with more than 80,000 arrivals recorded on peak days. For comparison: the historic center of Venice today has fewer than 50,000 inhabitants.
However, the experiment failed to reduce the number of visitors to the iconic canal city. Instead, almost 750,000 visitors were registered in the first eleven days of the pilot phase. On the same days in 2023, there were around 680,000 entries.
Despite the poor results, Venice authorities have announced that the daily tourist tax will be reintroduced in 2025, this time doubling to up to €10 ($10.80) on some days.
Many Venice residents opposed the entrance fee from the start and even protested on the day it was introduced. For activists, the solution to Venice’s tourism problems lies in supporting the local community.
Entrance fee to Venice is an “attack on privacy”
Susanna Polloni is an activist with the organization Rete Solidale Casa, which fights for the housing rights of Venice residents.
She emphasizes that the entrance fee affects not only tourists who have to pay, but also those who live in the city and do not have to pay.
“What rational reasons can justify the invasion of privacy by reducing the most beautiful city in the world to the only paid city and forcing its residents to prove that they are citizens of their own city?” she says.
“The burden of overtourism has shifted to the lives of Venice’s citizens.”
“Urgent” need to reduce short-term rentals in Venice
Polloni has examined the official data from Venice’s Smart Control Room, which collects all kinds of visitor statistics, and points to another problem that she believes authorities should address instead.
The number of overnight guests recorded is higher than the number of beds registered in the city, suggesting dozens of illegal short-term rentals.
There is an “indispensable urgency for the city to come up with a rental regulation that significantly reduces short-term rentals in the city,” she says.
Venice authorities need to invest in tourism management
For many activists, it is not just the number of tourists but also the type of tourism that is damaging Venice.
Valeria Duflot founded the visitor advisory website Venezia Autentica in 2015 and now advocates for a tourism model that benefits the local population.
“I believe that [the daytripper tax] “is not nearly enough to solve the big problems that tourism is causing today: the displacement of local businesses and the local population,” she says.
“We should all look at the decline of Venice, its community and its heritage as a cautionary tale and work together to change the way we measure success and engage communities in the tourism industry.”
Duflot would like to see a greater focus on influencing tourists and enabling them to spend their time and money where it benefits the local community, economy and heritage.
For Polloni, the 5 euro entry fee is not only ineffective, but also prevents funds from being used for measures to support residents.
“Other necessary and urgent measures include the renovation and handover of empty social housing, economic diversification to create jobs outside the sole tourism channel, improving public transport and social and health services,” she says.
“This is the only way it will be possible to save the city.”