Venice Officials Defend Day-Tripper Tax, But Delay The Decision On Extending It

Venice city officials said Friday that the day-tripper tax netted 2.4 million euros ($2.6 million) during a test phase this summer, and that decisions on how to proceed would be made in the fall after a full analysis of the data.

According to the city, the 5-euro tax was paid 485,062 times over the 29 test days, mostly weekends and holidays, from April 25 to July 14. The final numbers included paper access tickets sold to bus tours, cruise ships and some tour operators, accounting for about 1,000 entrances on each of the test days.

Italians accounted for 60% of visitors to the ticket website in the period, followed by U.S., German and French citizens, ranging from 6.5% to 4% of the totals.

City officials have indicated that the system, where day-trippers pay an entrance fee, would be extended next year, and doubled to 10 euros, at least on some days, but did not make any immediate announcements.

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said that the city would consider adjusting the fee based on if the tax is paid in advance, or at the last minute. He defended the tourist tax from critics, who called it a failure for allegedly not deterring arrivals, as envisioned.

“We listened to citizens, to associations, to thousands of people, but in the end, there were no alternative solutions to ours,” Brugnaro said. “We thought to take this road of the controls, which were light enough, not invasive.”

Visitors not staying in lodging in the city were required to download a QR code showing they had paid the tax; officials said that the average length of the transaction was 2 minutes. Hotel guests, who pay a lodging tax, were exempt, as were people living in the Veneto region, visitors under 14, and those visiting relatives, among others.

Venice has long been grappling with overtourism, with estimates of 25 million to 30 million annual arrivals of both day-trippers and overnight guests roughly confirmed by cell phone data tracked from a Smart Control Room since 2020, according to city officials.

The day-tripper tax, delayed by the pandemic, was heralded by UNESCO member states when they decided against a recommendation to place the city on its list of world heritage sites in danger. The city had 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.

The city’s top tourist official, Simone Venturini, said the entrance fee marked “a cultural revolution.”

“For the first time in the world, a city has an instrument that allows to finally have clear data, and not just approximate estimates, not longer interpretations of data, but exact data” of people entering and leaving the city,’’ he said.

BY COLLEEN BARRY

Venice Nets $2.2 Million In Day-Tripper Tax Pilot. Opponents Say It Failed To Deter Visitors

Venice on Sunday wrapped up a pilot program charging day-trippers an entrance fee, more than 2 million euros ($2.2 million) richer and determined to extend the levy, but opponents in the fragile lagoon city called the experiment a failure.

Several dozen activists gathered outside the Santa Lucia train station overlooking a teeming canal on Saturday to protest the 5-euro ($5.45) levy that they say did little to dissuade visitors from arriving on peak days, as envisioned.

“The ticket is a failure, as demonstrated by city data,” said Giovanni Andrea Martini, an opposition city council member.

Over the first 11 days of the trial period, an average of 75,000 visitors were recorded in the city. Martini said that is 10,000 more each day than on three indicative holidays in 2023, citing figures provided by the city based on cell phone data that tracks arrivals in the city.

Venice imposed the long-discussed day-tripper tax on 29 days this year, mostly weekends and holidays, from April 25 through mid-July. The project, delayed by the pandemic, was heralded by UNESCO member states when they decided against a recommendation to place the city on its list of world heritage sites in danger.

Over the last 2 1/2 months, nearly 450,000 tourists have paid the tax, raising revenues of some 2.2 million euros ($2.4 million), according to AP calculations based on data supplied by the city. Officials said the money would be used for essential services, which cost more in a city traversed by canals, including trash removal and maintenance.

The levy was not applied to people staying in hotels in Venice, who are already charged a lodging tax. Exemptions also applied to children under 14, residents of the region, students, workers and people visiting relatives, among others.

The city’s top tourism official, Simone Venturini, has indicated that the levy will be continued and reinforced. A proposal to double the fee to 10 euros is being considered for next year, a city spokesman said.

Officials promised steep fines for scofflaws, but in the end none was given during checks at entry points, which varied from a low of 8,500 to a high 20,800 a day over the period. City officials say that is because they wanted a soft launch. Critics say it resulted in a downward trend in payments as visitors understood there was no risk in avoiding the payment.

Opponents of the plan say it failed to make the city more liveable for residents, as intended, with the narrow walkways and water taxis as crowded as ever. They want policies that encourage repopulation of Venice’s historic center, which has been losing residents to the more convenient mainland for decades, including placing limits on short-term rentals.

There are now more tourist beds in the canaled historic center than official residents, whose numbers stand at an all-time low of 50,000.

“Wanting to raise this to 10 euros, is absolute useless. It makes Venice a museum,” Martini, the city council member, said.

Many of the banners at Saturday’s protest also indicated growing concern about the system of electronic and video surveillance that the city introduced in 2020 to monitor cell phone data of people arriving in the city, which is the backbone of the system to control tourism. Placards included warnings about use of personal data and a lack of data privacy.

“The access ticket is a great distraction for the media, which only speaks about this 5 euros, which will become 10 euros next year,’’ said Giovanni Di Vito, a Venice resident active in the campaign against the tourist tax. “But no one is focusing on the system for surveillance and control of citizens.”

BY COLLEEN BARRY

Travelore News: Venice Rolls Out Day-Tripper Fee To Try To Regulate Mass Crowds On Peak Weekends

Venice authorities on Thursday unveiled a pilot program to charge day-trippers 5 euros ($5.45) apiece to enter the fragile lagoon city on peak weekends next year in an effort to reduce crowds, encourage longer visits and improve the quality of life for residents.

The rollout of the tourist “contribution” program came after Venice, a UNESCO World Heritage site, narrowly escaped being placed on the U.N. agency’s danger list earlier this year because of the threat that overtourism was having on its delicate ecosystem. Member states cited the proposed new entry fee in deciding to spare Venice from the list.

Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro stressed Thursday that the fee is not a new tourist tax or an attempt to bring in extra revenue. Rather, he said, it is a first-of-its-kind experiment in regulating tourist flows in one of the world’s most-visited places by incentivizing visitors to avoid high-traffic periods and come on other days.

“Our attempt is to make a more livable city,” he said at a news conference outlining the pilot program.

In all, 29 days from April to mid-July -– including most weekends --- will be subject to the day-tripper fee during peak hours from 8:30 a.m. until 4 p.m., meaning visitors who come into Venice for dinner or a concert won’t have to pay.

A host of exemptions apply, including for residents and Venetian-born visitors, students and workers, as well as tourists who have hotel or other lodging reservations.

Starting on Jan. 16, a website, www.cda.ve.it, will go live at which visitors can “reserve” their day in Venice. Day trippers pay 5 euros and get a QR code that will then be checked at spot controls at seven access points around the city, including at the main train station.

Visitors with hotel reservations enter their hotel information and also get a QR code to show, without having to pay since their hotel bill will already include a Venice lodging fee.

After COVID-19 lockdowns devastated Venice’s tourism industry, the city of narrow alleyways, canals and islands has been trying to rethink its relationship with visitors in a more sustainable way while also seeking to incentivize its residents to stay put.

Venice has been forced to take action in response to the steady exodus of Venetians to the mainland and pressure from UNESCO and environmentalists, who also lobbied successfully to have the government ban big cruise ships from sailing past St. Mark’s Square and through the Giudecca canal.

Venice has been pointing to longer-term tourists as key to its survival since they tend to spend more. Brugnaro said in no way does the new day-tripper contribution discourage tourism overall, but just seeks to manage it better. He acknowledged the visitor program will probably have glitches and will need to be amended. But he said that after years of study and talk, it was time to roll it out.

BY NICOLE WINFIELD, AP

Tourist-Flooded Venice OKs Test Of Fee For Day-Trippers On Peak Visitor Weekends In 2024

Tourist-flooded Venice approved guidelines on Tuesday for testing a new fee for day-trippers on peak visitor weekends next year.

The city council gave the go-ahead for the guidelines, tweaking earlier plans for a fee that were announced a year ago. Final approval of the plan will come up for consideration on Sept. 12.

The fee, initially 5 euros ($5.50) per day-tripper, is “not a tool for making cash,” the city said in a statement. Instead, the strategy aims to improve the quality of life for Venice’s dwindling number of full-time residents as well as overnight visitors, who already pay a lodging tax and so will be exempt from the fee.

The test will last about 30 days and take place in 2024 on spring weekends spanning Italian national holidays and on summer weekends. The exact days of the test will be set by the city in the coming weeks.

Italy Faces New Drought Alert As Venice Canals Run Dry

Weeks of dry winter weather have raised concerns that Italy could face another drought after last summer's emergency, with the Alps having received less than half of their normal snowfall, according to scientists and environmental groups.

The warning comes as Venice, where flooding is normally the primary concern, faces unusually low tides that are making it impossible for gondolas, water taxis and ambulances to navigate some of its famous canals.

The problems in Venice are being blamed on a combination of factors -- the lack of rain, a high pressure system, a full moon and sea currents.

Italian rivers and lakes are suffering from severe lack of water, the Legambiente environmental group said on Monday, with attention focused on the north of the country.

The Po, Italy's longest river which runs from the Alps in the northwest to the Adriatic has 61% less water than normal at this time of year, it added in a statement.

Last July Italy declared a state of emergency for areas surrounding the Po, which accounts for roughly a third of the country's agricultural production and suffered its worst drought for 70 years.

"We are in a water deficit situation that has been building up since the winter of 2020-2021," climate expert Massimiliano Pasqui from Italian scientific research institute CNR was quoted as saying by daily Corriere della Sera.

"We need to recover 500 millimetres in the north-western regions: we need 50 days of rain," he added.

Water levels on Lake Garda in northern Italy have fallen to record lows, making it possible to reach the small island of San Biagio on the lake via an exposed pathway.

An anticyclone has been dominating the weather in western Europe for 15 days, bringing mild temperatures more normally seen in late spring.

Latest weather forecasts do however signal the arrival of much-needed precipitation and snow in the Alps in coming days.

By Cristina Carlevaro; Editing by Keith Weir and Hugh Lawson

Venice Introduces Mandatory Day-Trippers’ Reservation And Fee

Starting in January, Venice will oblige day-trippers to make reservations and pay a fee to visit the historic lagoon city, in a bid to better manage visitors who often far outnumber residents in the historic center, clogging narrow streets and heavily-used foot bridges crossing the canals.

Note that selfie sticks are frowned upon in Venice.
Venice officials on Friday unveiled new rules for day-trippers, which go into effect on Jan. 16, 2023.

Tourists who choose not to stay overnight in hotels or other lodgings will have to sign up online for the day they plan to come and pay a fee. These range from 3 to 10 euros ($3.15 to $10.50) per person, depending on advance booking and whether it’s peak season or the city is very crowded.

Transgressors risk fines as high as 300 euros ($315) if stopped and unable to show proof they booked and paid with a QR Code.

Roughly four-fifths of all tourists come to Venice just for the day. In 2019, the last full year of tourism before the pandemic, some 19 million day-trippers visited Venice and provided just a fraction of the revenue from those staying for at least one night.

Venice’s tourism commissioner brushed off any suggestion that the measure would seek to limit the number of out-of-towners coming to Italy’s most-visited city.

“We won’t talk about number cutoffs. We’re talking about incentives and disincentives,” Simone Venturini told a news conference in Venice.

The reservation-and-fee approach had been discussed a few years ago, but was put on hold during the pandemic. COVID-19 travel restrictions saw tourism in Venice nearly vanish — and let Venetians have their city practically to themselves, for the first time in decades.

Mass tourism began in the mid-1960s. Visitor numbers kept climbing, while the number of Venetians living in the city steadily dwindled, overwhelmed by congestion, the high cost of delivering food and other goods in car-less Venice, and frequent flooding that damages homes and businesses.

Since guests at hotels and pensions already pay a lodging tax, they are exempt from the reserve-and-fee obligation.

With the new rule, Venice aims to “find this balance between (Venetian) resident and long-term and short-term” visitors, Venturini said, promising that the new system “will be simple for visitors” to manage. He billed Venice as the first city in the world putting such a system for day-only visitors in place.

The tourism official expressed hope that the fee-and-reservation obligation will “reduce frictions between day visitors and residents.” In peak tourism system, tourists can outnumber residents 2-to-1, in the city that measures 5 square kilometers (2 square miles) in area.

Venice’s resident population in the historic city numbers just over 50,000, a small fraction of what it was a couple of generations ago.

Exceptions to the day-tripper fees include children younger than 6, people with disabilities and those owning vacation apartments in Venice, provided they can show proof they pay real estate taxes.

Cruise ships contribute to the hordes of visitors swarming Venice’s maze of narrow streets, especially near St. Mark’s Square, when they disembark day-trippers for a few hours. Those visitors will have to pay, too, unless their cruise liner company pays a set fee to Venice.

By FRANCES D'EMILIO

Flooding In Venice Worsens Off-Season Amid Climate Change

VENICE, Italy (AP) — After Venice suffered the second-worst flood in its history in November 2019, it was inundated with four more exceptional tides within six weeks, shocking Venetians and triggering fears about the worsening impact of climate change.

The repeated invasion of brackish lagoon water into St. Mark’s Basilica this summer is a quiet reminder that the threat hasn’t receded.

“I can only say that in August, a month when this never used to happen, we had tides over a meter five times. I am talking about the month of August, when we are quiet,” St. Mark’s chief caretaker, Carlo Alberto Tesserin, told The Associated Press.

Venice’s unique topography, built on log piles among canals, has made it particularly vulnerable to climate change. Rising sea levels are increasing the frequency of high tides that inundate the 1,600-year-old Italian lagoon city, which is also gradually sinking.

It is the fate of coastal cities like Venice that will be on the minds of climate scientists and global leaders meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, at a U.N. climate conference that begins Oct. 31.

Venice’s worse-case scenario for sea level rise by the end of the century is a startling 120 centimeters (3 feet, 11 inches), according to a new study published by the European Geosciences Union. That is 50% higher than the worse-case global sea-rise average of 80 centimeters (2 feet, 7 1/2 inches) forecast by the U.N. science panel.

The city’s interplay of canals and architecture, of natural habitat and human ingenuity, also has earned it recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its outstanding universal value, a designation put at risk of late because of the impact of over-tourism and cruise ship traffic. It escaped the endangered list after Italy banned cruise ships from passing through St. Mark’s Basin, but alarm bells are still ringing.

Sitting at Venice’s lowest spot, St. Mark’s Basilica offers a unique position to monitor the impact of rising seas on the city. The piazza outside floods at 80 centimeters (around 30 inches), and water passes the narthex into the church at 88 centimeters (34.5 inches), which has been reinforced up from a previous 65 centimeters (25.5 inches).

“Conditions are continuing to worsen since the flooding of November 2019. We therefore have the certainty that in these months, flooding is no longer an occasional phenomenon. It is an everyday occurrence,” said Tesserin, whose honorific, First Procurator of St. Mark’s, dates back to the ninth century.

In the last two decades, there have been nearly as many inundations in Venice over 1.1 meters — the official level for “acqua alta,” or “high water,” provoked by tides, winds and lunar cycles — as during the previous 100 years: 163 vs. 166, according to city data.

Exceptional floods over 140 centimeters (4 feet, 7 inches) also are accelerating. That mark has been hit 25 times since Venice starting keeping such records in 1872. Two-thirds of those have been registered in the last 20 years, with five, or one-fifth of the total, from Nov. 12-Dec. 23, 2019.

“What is happening now is on the continuum for Venetians, who have always lived with periodic flooding,” said Jane Da Mosto, executive director of We Are Here Venice. “We are living with flooding that has become increasingly frequent, so my concern is that people haven’t really realized we are in a climate crisis. We are already living it now. It is not a question of plans to deal with it in the future. We need to have solutions ready for today.”

Venice’s defense has been entrusted to the Moses system of moveable underwater barriers, a project costing around 6 billion euros (nearly $7 billion) and which, after decades of cost overruns, delays and a bribery scandal, is still officially in the testing phase.

Following the devastation of the 2019 floods, the Rome government put the project under ministry control to speed its completion, and last year start activating the barriers when floods of 1.3 meters (4 feet, 3 inches) are imminent.

The barriers have been raised 20 times since October 2020, sparing the city a season of serious flooding but not from the lower-level tides that are becoming more frequent.

The extraordinary commissioner, Elisabetta Spitz, stands by the soundness of the undersea barriers, despite concerns by scientists and experts that their usefulness may be outstripped within decades because of climate change. The project has been delayed yet again, until 2023, with another 500 million euros ($580 million) in spending, for “improvements” that Spitz said will ensure its long-term efficiency.

“We can say that the effective life of the Moses is 100 years, taking into account the necessary maintenance and interventions that will be implemented,” Spitz said.

Paolo Vielmo, an engineer who has written expert reports on the project, points out that the sea level rise was projected at 22 centimeters (8 1/2 inches) when the Moses was first proposed more than 30 years ago, far below the U.N. scientists’ current worse-case scenario of 80 centimeters.

“That puts the Moses out of contention,” he said.

According to current plans, the Moses barriers won’t be raised for floods of 1.1 meters (3 feet, 7 inches) until the project receives final approval. That leaves St. Mark’s exposed.

Tesserin is overseeing work to protect the Basilica by installing a glass wall around its base, which eventually will protect marshy lagoon water from seeping inside, where it deposits salt that eats away at marble columns, wall cladding and stone mosaics. The project, which continues to be interrupted by high tides, was supposed to be finished by Christmas. Now Tesserin says they will be lucky to have it finished by Easter.

Regular high tides elicit a blase response from Venetians, who are accustomed to lugging around rubber boots at every flood warning, and delight from tourists, fascinated by the sight of St. Mark’s golden mosaics and domes reflected in rising waters. But businesses along St. Mark’s Square increasingly see themselves at ground zero of the climate crisis.

“We need to help this city. It was a light for the world, but now it needs the whole world to understand it,” said Annapaola Lavena, speaking from behind metal barriers that kept waters reaching 1.05 meters (3 feet, 5 inches) from invading her marble-floored cafe.

“The acqua alta is getting worse, and it completely blocks business. Venice lives thanks to its artisans and tourism. If there is no more tourism, Venice dies,” she explained. “We have a great responsibility in trying to save it, but we are suffering a lot.”

Venice Opens Film Fest With Caution

VENICE (AP) — Visitors to Venice could be forgiven for not realizing that beyond the majesty of St. Mark’s Square and the romance of gondola rides lies a city that centuries ago helped provide a baseline of what the world knows today about containing pandemics.

It was here that the term “quarantine” was coined, after merchant ships arriving in the 15th-century Venetian Republic were moored for 40 days (“quaranta giorni” in Italian) to see if their crews were afflicted with the plague. It was here that the first isolated pestilence hospital was built on a solitary island in the lagoon, a precursor to today’s COVID-19 isolation wards. And it was in Venice that 16th-century doctors donned beak-nosed masks filled with aromatic herbs to cleanse the air they breathed when treating the sick — an attempt at self-protection that today is the favored choice for Venetian Carnival costumes.

Venice’s central place in the history of battling pandemics provides a relevant backdrop to this year’s Venice Film Festival, which opens Wednesday with the premiere of Pedro Almodovar’s in-competition film “Parallel Mothers.” Almodovar developed the project during Spain’s 2020 coronavirus lockdown, one of the harshest in the West.

In a pre-opening screening Tuesday, Italian director Andre Segre presents a short documentary shot last year showing how Venice organizers coped with COVID-19 to stage the first and only in-person international film festival during the first year of the outbreak.

The scenes in Segre’s film — shocking then, normal now — feature half-full theaters for Hollywood premieres, masked movie stars, cleaners in hazmat suits and the “blink, blink, blink” of remote thermometers taking temperatures at festival checkpoints.

Festival director Alberto Barbera said Tuesday he hopes the festival’s 2021 edition will mark the “reopening that was not the case last year.” But unlike the film festival in Cannes, which came back to life this year in France after skipping 2020, Venice still has to comply with stringent Italian anti-COVID restrictions.

A huge barricade once again is sealing off public access to the red carpet and there are limited chances for fans to catch VIP water taxi arrivals on the Lido. More than 10 testing stations have been set up, and festival-goers must show proof of a negative test, vaccination or having recently recovered from COVID-19 to enter screenings. Masks are required indoors.

In other words, the Venice show is going on — other premieres at the world’s oldest film festival include the debut of Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” and Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in “Spencer” — even as Italy copes with new infections driven by the highly contagious delta variant.

For Venice, though, it’s really nothing new.

“The history of Venice is a history that teaches us how our city, first among European capitals, understood ahead of time how to manage viruses,” said Simone Venturini, Venice’s tourism chief. “These recurrences are studied and recalled even more today because the Venetian model is a model that paradoxically is still used.”

Beginning with the first confirmed plague to strike Venice — the 1348 outbreak that killed at least a third of its population — the city put in place containment measures even without understanding epidemiologically how it spread, said Fabio Zampieri, a history of medicine professor at the University of Padua Medical School.

Based on the belief that “bad air” was to blame for what became known as the Black Death, Venetian authorities closed churches and restaurants, canceled religious processions and ordered a thorough cleaning of homes and public venues, Zampieri said.

During the pestilence that erupted in 1423, Venice’s senate decided to lock down the whole city, prohibiting entry of people from suspected plague-ridden places and punishing locals who gave sick foreigners shelter with six months in jail, he said. A year later, Venice opened the first “lazzaretto,” a hospital on an isolated island in the Venetian lagoon dedicated exclusively to plague victims.