Venice launches its 5-euro entry ticket to combat overtourism

Tourism must ” to change » and city tours “dilute”, said the mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro. On the morning of Thursday April 25, the city launched its 5-euro entry ticket for day tourists – a device intended to stem overtourism. These tickets, which are in the form of QR codes sold online or on site, must be presented to controllers stationed in particular on the station square, the main access to the city of the Doges, where the situation was fluid on Thursday, a public holiday. in Italy.

By forcing day tourists to pay 5 euros to stroll along its famous canals, Venice hopes to dissuade some of them from coming on busy days. In front of Santa Lucia station, the main point of entry into the city, a ticket office was hastily set up to help tourists without this new access.

At this stage, however, the experience remains very limited in scope: for 2024, only twenty-nine busy days are affected by this new tax, which will be applied almost every weekend from May to July.

“An experiment”

Venice thus becomes the first tourist city in the world to impose an entrance fee like a theme park, while movements hostile to overtourism are multiplying, particularly in Spain, pushing the authorities to act to reconcile the good -being inhabitants and a crucial economic sector. For the tourism assistant, Simone Venturini, it is “especially to discourage local tourism for residents of the Veneto region who can visit Venice whenever they want”.

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro himself recognized at the beginning of April that“this is an experiment”, which will undoubtedly be closely followed by other major tourist cities around the world. Its town, one of the most visited in the world, has already banned giant cruise ships from its historic center, whose swarms of passengers disembarking further afield will also have to show their credentials.

At peak attendance, 100,000 tourists sleep in Venice, in addition to tens of thousands of daily visitors. Compare to the approximately 50,000 inhabitants of the city center, which continues to depopulate.

Several exemptions planned

This tax also targets only daily tourists entering the old town between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. They can download their QR code on the site (https://cda.ve.it/fr/), available in Italian, but also in English, Spanish, French and German. A fine of 50 to 300 euros is planned to punish tourists who try to slip through the cracks, even if local authorities have said they want to favor persuasion over repression.

Tourists sleeping at least one night on site are exempt and receive a free QR code of their place of accommodation. Many other exemptions are planned: under 14s, students, etc. On Thursday, around 90,000 people had benefited from this at midday, according to the town hall.

But this new measure is not unanimous among Venetians, some seeing it as an attack on freedom of movement and a further step towards the museumification of their city. “We are not a museum or a nature reserve, but a city, we should not pay” to access it, protests Marina Dodino, who is part of a local residents’ association, ARCI Venezia. A demonstration at the end of the morning, not far from the station, brought together around three hundred people in a good-natured atmosphere.