With day-trip fee ‘Disney-fication’ of Venice, the world hits its overtourism tipping point

Venice is not solely sinking, it is shrinking. In the 1970s, there have been about 175,000 residents in Centro Storico, the fundamental island and historic heart of Venice. As of final yr, that quantity was under 50,000. What has been rising steadily is tourism, which on account of financial and quality-of-life stress, has been pushing out residents. In truth, there are actually extra vacationer beds in Venice than there are residents. Last yr, 20 million individuals visited, winding their manner by its two sq. miles.  

Last week, Venice took motion on overtourism, introducing a 5€ fee to day trippers who wish to entry the metropolis. The goal, Venice’s Mayor Luigi Brugnaro stated in a press convention, “is not to close the city, but not let it explode.”

The program, formally launched on April 25 — a traditionally vital day, as it’s each Italy’s Liberation Day and the feast day of the metropolis’s patron saint, St. Mark — took the mayor’s phrases in a path he hadn’t supposed, with roughly a thousand protestors gathered in Piazzale Roma to oppose the measure, in the end clashing with police in riot gear. 

Residents voiced a spread of issues regardless of the measure being designed partly to assist make their metropolis extra livable. They objected to the thought of residing in a closed metropolis. Some argued that promoting tickets reduces their metropolis to an amusement park – Veniceland. There’s additionally a central irony, critics say, in a authorities that at the identical time is contemplating a number of methods to extend tourism, from weighing the thought of cruise ships returning to the lagoon to rest of limits on Airbnbs.

A once-in-a-lifetime vacation spot for a lot of vacationers from round the world, the most vital criticism could also be that the price is unlikely to discourage anybody from visiting the metropolis.

“Almost the entire city is against it,” Matteo Secchi, chief of a residents’ activist group, told the Guardian. “You can’t impose an entrance fee to a city; all they’re doing is transforming it into a theme park. … I mean, are we joking?” 

On the first day of its implementation, in response to knowledge from the mayor’s workplace, 113,000 individuals registered, and of these 16,000 paid the fee — others had been exempt for varied causes, together with resort stays, being a commuter, a pupil, or visiting household or buddies. 

Despite its many detractors, the day fee is a big transfer on the half of Venice’s authorities to confront the problem of overtourism, which has turn out to be a significant global problem since the pandemic. “This administration is the first one after 30 years of chit-chat on putting a brake to tourism growth that has actually done something,” stated Antonio Paolo Russo, who was born in Venice and is a professor of city geography at Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain.

But Russo, providing a view consultant of many specialists, stated the measure appears prone to fall brief in phrases of effectiveness, and smacks of political gestures, in addition to obscure revenue motives. “5€ won’t make any difference with such a large demand. … the tourist destiny of the city is scripted in the way it is regulated,” he stated. 

Venice is the first location to require a ticket to enter a metropolis — to make the metropolis itself the attraction — and authorized challenges may nonetheless be forward, in nationwide or EU courts, underneath legal guidelines overlaying freedom of motion in public locations. Other standard vacationer locations have comparable packages, however restricted to locales and sights inside a metropolis, reminiscent of Barcelona’s Park Guell.

Charging vacationers to enter standard locations has labored round the world, however solely when there’s a clear indication of the place the cash will go, reminiscent of environmental preservation, and when the income is saved separate from the normal authorities ledger. Belize’s Protected Area Conservation Trust was a pioneering motion 25 years in the past which met these standards, and packages of this kind are on the rise. Bali lately launched a vacationer tax to guard the vacation spot’s atmosphere, nature and tradition. Barcelona just increased its vacationer tax, whereas Amsterdam lately raised its vacationer tax to the highest rate in Europe. The various taxation schemes being utilized to vacationers are prone to proceed to develop round the world. 

But Venice is Venice, and it stays singular in conversations surrounding overtourism, owing partly to its small measurement, its historic nature, its magnificence, and, in some ways, the symbolic influence of seeing monumental cruise ships pulling as much as it like Godzilla. All of which makes the stakes for the new fee higher, and the hope for its success increased. 

Experts say good knowledge is important to success in combating overtourism. Existing packages — reminiscent of these in the Balearic Islands or Amsterdam — accumulate thorough knowledge for evaluation. Russo stated this makes him involved about the Venice program, which was not been matched by revealed research main as much as its implementation. “I am not aware of any kind of prior study commissioned by the city to evaluate the effects from the introduction of this system on visitation behavior. They might exist, but the academic and the local community have not been informed,” Russo stated.

More taxes, extra advertising, extra vacationers

“One of the biggest concerns is how the money is used and protected,” stated Megan Epler Wood, managing director of Cornell’s Sustainable Tourism Asset Management Program. In the case of Venice, the fee will not deter guests, however she stated that doesn’t imply it is not essential: “There is a real need for these funds,” Epler Wood stated. But the majority of tourism taxes goes into tourism advertising, and the extra taxes go into advertising, the extra vacationers come, elevating extra taxes to pump again into advertising, resulting in extra vacationers nonetheless. “The longer that goes on, the harder it becomes to manage those numbers, as we’ve seen in Venice,” Epler Wood stated. 

Taxation will not essentially assist if it would not particularly take care of the “invisible burden” of vacationers, notably in weak places. In Venice, Epler Wood stated, that may solely be achieved by having good knowledge on how a lot every vacationer “costs” in influence to the locations they go to, together with the stress they placed on infrastructure. This is especially true in Venice, the place the presence of cruise ships in recent times and hundreds of individuals disembarking on the small, historic metropolis, has made it a poster little one for over-tourism.

“Managing utilities is part of the invisible burden of tourism, because no one accounts for it, and that’s the problem with Venice’s new fee. They’re guessing. They don’t know how much money they need per tourist to combat associated costs,” Epler Wood stated.

Lack of initiatives systematically adopted on the demand aspect results in overtourism in the excessive season months to a couple internationally famend cities, locations and sights, and really low demand for the relaxation, stated Max Starkov, a hospitality and expertise advisor. If the need is to curb the quantity of guests, then it comes all the way down to making use of typical provide/demand algorithms to excessive seasons and standard locations by way of a centralized reserving system, very similar to airways, and theme parks, already do. 

“Overtourism is becoming the new normal,” Starkov stated. Travel, in his view, has “become figured into people’s sense of basic human needs. After you take care of your physiological needs: food, shelter, clothing, sleep, etc., next comes health, family and … travel.”

Compounded in the aftermath of the pandemic by the phenomenon generally known as revenge travel, the Venice day-trip fee might turn out to be an emblematic symptom of overtourism, relatively than resolution to it.

“Overtourism is more than simply too much tourism. It’s about a failure of government policy and an inability to regulate and shape the way tourism manifests,” stated Joseph Cheer, professor of sustainable tourism at Western Sydney University, Australia, & co-chair of World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Future of Sustainable Tourism. 

The Venice fee, he stated, arrived at the finish of an already troubled course of, relatively than coming into on the demand aspect to raised management it. “Taxes and fees are a blunt instrument based on the premise tourists are price-sensitive. This is problematic when it comes to destinations like Venice that are ‘once in a lifetime’ places to visit,” Cheer stated.