Italy: Venice unveils date for tourist entry fee in 2024
Newswire
Venice: Tourists visiting Venice will have to pay a €5 (£4.35) per head entrance fee during busy periods starting from the spring, the mayor of the World Heritage city has announced.
Luigi Brugnaro announced the dates on which tourists will be charged to enter the lagoon city, as it prepares to launch the contentious tourist tax scheme.
The entrance charge will apply to 29 days in 2024: April 25-30, May 1-5, and all subsequent weekends until July 14, with the exception of June 1-2.
Faced with huge numbers of tourists, the hope among Venetians is that the fee will either dissuade them from visiting or persuade them to spend more than just a day exploring the canals, bridges and palazzi of Venice.
People who spend more than one night in La Serenissima, as the city is known, will be exempt from the charge, which the Venice authorities are calling “a contribution to access”.
Visitors will be able to pay the entrance fee on a website and receive a QR code. They will be randomly checked by Venetian officials at eight access points around the city to make sure they have obtained the pass. Anyone found not to have the QR code will face a fine of up to €300.
“This is an experiment that has never been tried anywhere in the world,” said Mr Brugnaro.
“Venice is complex and fragile, but it is a living city, and we have the obligation to take measures because in the historic centre, during certain times of the year, there is overcrowding and we need to address it.”
He insisted it was not an attempt to make money, saying that the costs of implementing the scheme would be greater than the revenue received.
Venice would never be “closed” once a certain number of visitors had been reached, he said, but it was vital to try to reduce the crush.
Implementing the scheme will be challenging, he acknowledged, saying: “There will be problems for sure, no one in the world has ever done this, but we are humble enough to think that as we try it, we may have to make corrections.”
First mooted in 2019, the entrance fee was finally approved in September after years of delays caused by the Covid pandemic and intense debate over whether it will have any effect on the millions of tourists to the lagoon city each year.
Critics of the initiative doubt whether a €5 charge – less than the cost of a glass of wine in most Venetian bars – will deter many people from visiting.
When the measure was approved by the city council, Giuseppe Saccà, from the centre-Left Democratic Party, said: “Venice will be the first city in the world in which you have to pay to enter. But will people really choose to save €5, rather than see Venice?”
