After ~9 years in California, I moved from San Francisco to Venice, Italy (Venezia) in late 2020. (I am originally from Italy).
Venice is an amazing city, and it's not as expensive as people think, if you plan to stay long term.
When the Covid-19 situation got better in early 2022, TONS of tourists came back, and Venice is now more crowded than it was before the pandemic.
Residents (of the historical city center, or the "main" Venice), down to a total of about 50,000 (from a peak of ~175,000 [0]), are really angry at the overcrowding and are looking for solutions.
In certain weekends this year, the number of visitors reached 130,000 per day, which is about twice as much as the city can support without deterioration of city life and services.
Entry tickets, if handled properly, could be a great way to fix the issue.
The current solution has some flaws, and I don't believe that it will solve the issue properly. (overnight visitors don't pay; ferry rides are not integrated in the ticket; etc).
I believe that the right structure should include a combination of:
1) expensive tickets (€50 per day per person) that allow you to come regardless of any other limitation.
2) advance purchase tickets (€5 per day per person)
3) progressive tickets (starting at €5 per day per person, but going as high as €25 when the number of visitors in a given day approaches 60,000).
Also, the parking system (Tronchetto and Piazzale Roma), owned by private companies, should introduce a similar progressive ticket, but the extra income should go to the municipality, not to the private company.
The extra money earned this way should go towards improving the logistics of the city, easing the pressure that tourism puts on the residents.
This all sounds very sensible. NPR’s Planet Money podcast went into some detail about the economics of fair allocation for the New York Marathon - they reference the solutions you mentioned and a few more as well!
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/03/793488868/episode-962-advance...
So you are suggesting to allocate tourist access to the city primarily to the wealthy, especially on the most desirable days such as weekends and holidays? The poor can visit on less desirable days?
I don't disagree with that, but we should be clear that this is what is being proposed.
That's what advance purchase tickets are for. "Think of the poor people!" is not always warranted. Visiting Venice as a tourist is a luxury. Do you think poor people should also be able to park their cars in Manhattan for free?
Even ignoring all the overhead that would bring, it's not feasible for a local municipality to do background checks on the net income or wealth of foreign visitors in any way that would be reliable. It would be trivial to bypass this with fake statements.
So then rich people will pay poor people to buy the tickets for them. And that's if you can come up with a way for someone to declare their wealth reliably.
When I went to Victoria Falls national park on Zimbabwe, the fees were based on which country’s passport you were presenting. Richer country passport holders had to pay more, poorer country passport holders paid less.
Like traffic fines in some European countries, but with a lottery system as well if the number of potential visitors is high enough, with no substitution of people to eliminate reseller market for lottery. Some national parks in the USA already have to limit visitors and state and county and local parks in California that I have seen during the pandemic had to put limits on people visiting and a lot of that was free. Most of the US solutions are based on first come first served or reservations with first come first served so equity of any kind is not addressed otherwise.
What I've seen in New York is that New York City and/or New York State residents get discounted or free entry (sometimes only on certain days) to various venues. So all these fees could be reduced or eliminated for Italian citizens, who are most likely to be the poor visitors you mention. I think it's fair to expect non-Italians flying or taking the train into Italy to pay more.
Different state. My drivers license says City A. But my taxes go to City B, (they provide police, etc) Geographically this makes sense.
All community centers, pools, camps, etc for both cities refuse to give in-city rates. Since either my license says the wrong city, or my taxes go to the wrong city.
Tourism at this scale is a modern day privilege, you can some some nice vacations without going to europe’s most crowded island. My best vacation were far from the most expensive one. And my most expensive was one of the worst.
In my town , lots of things are cheaper for the working class of the town. Is this also unfair for the poor tourist, on his break?
The prices he suggests are not actually expensive and wouldn't allocate tourist access primarily to the wealthy. Personally I would go higher than that.
Another aspect I'm thinking about is 'motivation'. High prices that require to really think about it and perhaps even to plan in advance also filter visitors according to how much they wanted to visit.
I'm sure some people really dream of visiting Venice once in their life and would be willing to save if needed be in order to do so. On the other hand, there are people who see that Easyjet has 30 euro flights at the moment so decide to go to Venice for the weekend just like that.
I prefer lotteries. There is probably less revenue to be made but we can't make the beautiful places of the world into rich man's paradises where regular people can't go. Although I am sure a lot of people in power want such a world.
That is the pure capitalist solution. Venice is a limited resource that is not being managed well at the moment. Over harvested one could say.
Adding a fee, at some point supply and demand will become balanced. The city will have the max number of tourist it can handle at the max price people are willing to pay. The resource will now be managed correctly.
If the income is absurdly high, then other areas may start expanding out into the sea to provide a similar experience. Giving tourist more options. See Islands of Dubai for example. At some point enough new tourist options are opened that Venice will need to lower fee until a new balance is reached.
Thus tourist have more options and lower prices overall. Wealth has been created.
We live in a capitalist society. Anything that costs money pushes away those who don’t have money. The city needs money to support the non-tax paying tourists, you can think of the fee as a tax. I think it’s a good solution even when considering the downside that the fee is only significant for those with less money
> The cost of tickets will vary from €3 to €10 depending on the season.
So there will barely be an entry fee for people coming for the day too. For a measure targeting people coming from thousands of kilometers away, I do not see how this is even going to make a dent in the tourist influx.
Looking for relatively similar cases like Machu Picchu or Tanzania national parks, I would have expected a fee between 50$ and 100$ to curb the tourism.
I was lucky to visit Venice during the pandemic with few tourists around. But introverted me even sensed the crowd problem then, it must be hell during peak tourist season. But Venice is spectacular. Even a $100 entry would not stop most tourists. There would have to be a hard cap on how many people can visit and cruise ships and such should be discouraged.
"The fabulously beautiful planet of Bethselamin was so worried by
accumulative erosion cause by over ten billion visiting tourists per
year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the
amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from
your body weight when you leave; so every time you go to the
lavatory there, it is vitally important to get a receipt." - HHGTTG
Living in a tourist destination is a mixed experience. On the one hand
you have a beautiful city to enjoy. On the other hand you can't really
enjoy it for 6 to 9 months of the year because your neighbourhood is
over-run.
At a conference in Rome I met a Venetian who told me those cruise
ships are the bane of their lives. She wanted to move out for health
reasons, because the constant stinking miasma of marine diesel from
dozens of ships. They are also HUGE, like floating cities, that
literally darken the skyline. The tens of thousands of visitors
dropping litter and blocking the pavement to take selfies are just a
minor inconvenience.
I'd wager that Marghera's refinery saved Venice much more than tourism did, at least economically speaking. Also, are you talking about Venice proper (the island parts) or the City of Venice more widely (including Mestre and Marghera)?
> Also funny we never hear from the people who are making money from tourism?
I can speak for that. My grandpa was one of the kiosks owner in Piazza S. Marco. After his retirement my uncles inherited it.
My grandpa used to make a lot of money from tourists buying souvenirs. In the last 20 years sales dropped, nobody buys anything from them anymore, they are now trying to sell sweaters and hats and (of course) they can't seem to sell those either.
But still, my grandpa complains both when there's plenty of tourists and when there are none.
EDIT: I forgot to type where this was going: my grandpa is against this entry fee.
/EDIT
It would be interesting to know who actually makes money in Venice.
Just my two cents: if the only people happy in a city are those that make money from tourism then it's not a city, it's a theme park.
Souvenirs seem like really tough business, constantly changing trends and all that.
A branch of the family owns two restaurants in Venice and they are making money hand over fist. The quality of the food is completely average for Venice, but the locations are good, the menu is optimized for consistency and tourist tastes (north american, southeast asia/chineese and european primarily), and most importantly (according to them) they spend a ton of effort optimizing their presence on food review apps like tripadvisor.
Not sayings restaurants are easy, but they are making a shocking amount of money from selling very average food.
I live in a tourist destination, where a lot of the money is being siphoned off elsewhere in the state. The people making money off of it are fabulously rich and do not want to be heard from in discussions like this; they are heard from when a politician who took a bunch of money from them acts in ways that ignore the concerns of the people living in the city in favor of whatever makes the most money for the rich folks.
If you visit Venice and take a few tours and/or speak to locals you'll hear a lot more about how important tourism is. But there is a lot of thought put on the 'kind' of tourism they want and get.
Most probably the locals that remained are tied in to the business industry, and, as such, you'd expect that sort of discourse coming from them. But the majority that left (~175k down to ~50k, as a fellow HN-er said above) probably had a different opinion about that.
The middle ground is to encourage longer vacations, rather than cruise ships full of people who just hit the most popular destinations for a day and then leave for the next city. When tourists take longer trips they spread out to different places and don't all concentrate in one area.
You really can see everything worth seeing in Venice in a day or two. Like, Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague? Sure, spend a week, or more. Venice, not so much.
The cruise ships are large, but hardly "darken the skyline". They dock in the industrial part of the city, and you can't see them from most of the city.
They do now. Up until last year they docked at Tronchetto (https://www.google.com/maps/place/terminal+msc+venezia/@45.4...) traversing the Canale della Giudecca to get there (that big canal between the main island and the Giudecca island in the southern part).
I wonder if a 50 EUR entry price will really deter many visitors. Venice itself is a huge attraction, people travel there specifically at a significant cost in time and money. That 50 Euro sounds like a drop in the bucket to me, it will simply be priced into the whole cost, just like millions of people happily pay expensive entrance fees for other global attractions like certain amusement parks.
When I was a broke guy in my mid-20's backpacking around Europe €50 was most of a day's budget. Inflation would change that but all the same it'd be enough to make me just spend more time in Florence. But maybe that's the point; I wasn't doing much for the local economy.
Well, JFYI, the mayor of Florence is all over newspapers here in Italy because seemingly Venice could introduce this "access ticket" whilst his own similar proposal (for Florence) last year has not been approved.
As someone noticed earlier the introduction of a ticket to access a city (be it Venice or Florence) will probably only make a dent in the total amount of people visiting it (which is the actual problem, they are simply too many) while making a difference between the "wealthy" and the "poor".
If the issue is too many people, the only solution is to limit the number of people (within reason and using some common sense in the way these hypothetical limits are set and enforced), introducing a ticket won't make any difference if not - possibly - provide the municipalities with money to cover the expenses these tourists create (the first thing that comes to my mind is litter, but there is also water, street and bridges maintenance, etc.).
As someone else noted, it's probably some deterrent to people living fairly nearby who take casual day trips. But that's only about half the price of many museum admissions to say nothing of, as you say, theme parks.
It's a tricky situation. They definitely need entry tickets. You could raise prices until only very rich people can visit. This would probably also produce a lot of income. Or you can handle things with a lottery so everybody can give it a try. There is probably less money in that but it seems more fair.
I don't think the parking is gonna make much of a difference, as you can just park on the mainland and take one of the very frequent, cheap, and quick trains over the bridge.
But if you take a train you are susceptible to being taxed for entry to Venice, since they can just add some fee to the train fare, to either pay for maintenance of the city or simply to reduce numbers.
Kinda like a toll booth would make you susceptible to the same thing on the bridge.
The problem with both of those schemes is that there are a number of exceptions: people who live in the region, people who spend the night in the city... You don't want to place the burden of checking your hotel reservation on a train employee during a 5 minute ride or at a toll booth.
>> Entry tickets, if handled properly, could be a great way to fix the issue.
I disagree.
This seems like a "great way" to damage the tourism industry in Venice. In other words, I think this is a terrible way to deal with tourists who are visiting Venice, yet aren't spending enough money in Venice.
I think it would be better to require every adult tourist to buy, say, €10 worth of "Venice Money" which they could spend at any restaurant or shop in Venice during the day they are visiting. Too many tourists? Then increase it to, say, €15. Too few tourists? Then decrease it to, say, €5.
Part of the goal is to require tourists to spend a minimum amount of money while visiting Venice. Charging an admission fee seems too heavy-handed. Sure, I realize that my suggestion is tantamount to an admission fee, but it's likely to be more palatable to tourists. The goal isn't merely to get tourists to spend a sufficient amount of money in Venice; part of the goal is to make tourists happy to do so.
Tourists are notoriously fickle. Furthermore, they have myriad places in and around Italy, Europe, and, well, the world where they can spend their money. The current problem of too many tourists could very quickly turn into a problem of a dearth of tourists.
"Killing the goose that lays the golden egg" would obviously be foolish. I presume the economy in Venice benefits immensely from tourism. This is precisely the sort of measure that people tend to look back at in hindsight and exclaim, "How could we have committed such a blunder! What were we thinking?!?"
Having opined all of that, sure, I can see why denizens of Venice would welcome a measure that would decrease the number of tourists generally, and particularly the number of skinflint tourists who visit Venice, yet don't spend a single euro in Venice.
Also, frankly, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for Venice to enforce dress codes and behavior codes. For example, nobody wants an endless "parade" of motley dressed drunkards wandering around their neighborhood.
Personally I happily shop at Costco, but haven’t set foot in a Walmart in perhaps 20 years. I detest Walmart. Why? Part of the reason is this: Costco has a “greeter” standing at the enterance. Ostensibly the greeter’s job is to verify that people entering are members. In fact, that greeter is also eyeballing each person who enters and is empowered to deny enterance to people who don’t meet Costco’s minimum standards (which aren’t very high, but are still much, much higher than Walmart’s standards).
Similarly, one of the "secrets" to the success of Las Vegas strip is this: although they allow a lot of rowdy behavior, frankly, they actually keep a tight lid on things: a very, very, tight lid, which I presume you would have noticed if you’ve ever actually been there and paid attention.
It's a delicate balance which requires discretion bordering on sophisticated and subtle diplomacy.
For example, when dealing with "drunk idiots" the Las Vegas police tend to use kid gloves as much as possible. Why? The powers that be in Las Vegas want "visitors" (tourists) to tell their family, friends, and associates they had a great time on the Las Vegas strip. They also want most of the tourists themselves to return over, and over, and over again.
The same is true for a myriad of tourist destinations around the world.
I live in historic city center with the exact same issue.
This is about creating a livable city, and this implies balancing commercial interests with the interests of the larger local community. Tourism isn't unethical or bad, but it does become an issue as far as the locals are concerned when unchecked growth and a focus to maximize tourist spending pushes everything else out. That's when a city stops being a city and effectively turns into a theme park.
When it comes to local politics, it's clear to everyone that tourism is a cornerstone of our local economy. But at the same time, having millions visiting one's city does come at a cost regarding pollution, noise, mobility, safety, prices of goods and services, upkeep of public infrastructure, etc. Tourism is an industry and it needs to be treated as such in terms of policies and regulations.
Externalizing all of those costs to the local population simply won't do. Taxing tourists is just one tactic to do just that. Other strategies include toning down city marketing, adapting fiscal / grant policies for commerce and hospitality, a permit stop for hotels / airbn'b / B&B's, banning cruise ships from ports, limiting admissions to public venues (museums,...), regulating guided tours, regulating bars / restaurants (closing hours, terraces, signage,...)
At the same time, it's the responsibility of a city council to also enact policies / investments in alternate industries to ensure a healthy mix which makes it attractive enough for a diverse population to stay and live there e.g. invest in research, tech, higher education, local economies, etc.
If you did this you would have to make the amount of money required very high (hundreds of Euro) before it would tip the balance on the number of people there at peak season. Then you would exclude budget-conscious travellers without raising any revenue for city services which tourists consume.
I travelled to Venice as a student. My girlfriend was from Australia, that was the one chance in her life to go to Venice. We lived on low 10s of Euro a day and would have been eating sandwiches we made in Venice and pasta we cooked for dinner. We could have paid 10-20 Euro as an entry fee (as we did for the Uffizi, the Vatican museum, etc.) but not 100 Euro, even for 'Venice Money'.
The other thing this measure would encourage is higher prices and scams. People waiting near the train station offering to change Venice money for real money. Shops selling cigarettes and other high-value stuff at a markup for Venice money. Low-quality art and souvenirs being targeted at tourists who haven't spent all their money on the way out (as used to happen in Warsaw Pact countries which had currency controls). Higher prices on basic food and drink as cafes know that tourists will have a 'sunk cost' feeling.
Some of the problems are solved by modest ticketing. As mentioned if you have 5 million visitors a year and 50 euro tickets you make 250 million in revenue. For the city proper being down to 50,000 people that’s $5,000 less in property tax per year if each person has one property. Given multiple people per property you could probably lower property taxes to zero and offset the higher cost that comes from tourist prices with reduced taxation.
It really sounds like you have not been to Venice. Venice is not some random tourist place, people will go there regardless as it is the most stunning city in the world. The gondolas are full even though they are like $100 for 15 minutes. As are the restaurants. It is not a problem that tourists are not spending money there.
>>>people will go there regardless as it is the most stunning city in the world
I think that's overselling it. Greatly. I took a day trip to Venice from Ljubljana to meet family there. The whole place reeked of sewage, and the crowds of aimlessly meandering tourists were stifling. Like most tourist traps, it felt shallow, with little to offer beyond staring at old buildings, tons of shops selling worthless trinkets, and pricey restaurants. I wanted to try mingling with the locals more, but wasn't able to quickly find information on nightclubs/raves/etc. in the immediate area.
I took some nice pictures, rode in the gondola, went to dinner, then returned to LJ. I actually wish I had spent more time in Trieste, Zagreb, or had linked up with a casual acquaintance all the way in Zurich. My dad paid for everything we did while IN the city, but if I was spending my own money I would probably never return to Venice. So an entry tax is definitely a "nope" for me.
Trieste seemed like a quiet coastal town. It has enough "old stuff" if you want to take day trips examining such but without it being overwhelming or overhyped. It's off the beaten path despite having decent international transit links. I also saw more than a few nice-looking ladies and I generally prefer women from mid-tier cities over the more cosmopolitan types.
I was only in Zagreb for a day. I took a train from LJ, then walked several kilometers to scope out a university with a Masters program that I was curious about. The city felt a little "rough", reminding me of Philadelphia but with much less urban decay. The staff and the students at the university were stacked with attractive and curious females. Being the only black guy in a 3-piece suit in probably a 1000km radius may have been a factor.
"unpolished, quiet, probably a little dangerous, but FULL of beautiful women". The Former Yugoslavia is kinda like the Thai or Philippine countryside, but with better infrastructure and weather.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would be if I had applied to the Bled School of Business, setup shop as a defense consultant in LJ, and rotated through a circuit of bachelor pads in LJ/Trieste/Zagreb....
The problem isn't primarily "tourists who are not spending enough". It's too many tourists in general to the point that the city infrastructure can't actually support that many people and is overcrowded making it horrible for anyone who is trying to actually live there.
Another point is that overcrowding also makes it less pleasant for the tourists themselves. If you charge people €10 and they find it more pleasant, don't have to queue for drinks or to take selfies, and can get help if they need it, they might consider it well worth it.
I wonder what percentage of tourists that visit Venice would see it as "bucket list" or "once in a lifetime" type opportunity to the point that even a €500 entry ticket wouldn't make a noticeable dint in numbers. A lottery system seems a better (and fairer) bet, and those that miss out would just have to try their luck finding accommodation (which actually wasn't that hard when we tried 11 years ago, and personally I don't believe you can meaningfully take in a city like Venice in a single day - or even two for that matter).
Or instead of raising bureaucracy and locking out people (not everyone has a smartphone), you could do the more sensible approach and just make things more expensive overall until less people come.
Increasing hotel fees doesn’t stop day visitors. Venice also has plenty of Airbnb available, which in my uninformed opinion ruins any control the city has (maybe they require permits and tax?)
Increasing food prices hurts the locals, and just means many tourists will skip eating out.
Those gondolieres? Standard Venetians usually don't use them. Entry to palazzos? Ferries? Street coffees? Raise the damn prices! (Offer a highly discounted year pass to not affect locals).
Like come into the city? People aren't necessarily riding gondoliers. These are all independent businesses pricing things according to their own interests (as they can and should). The stated problem is that there are too many people coming in so they are directly addressing that behavior.
It is legitimate to tax consumption of goods and services, e.g. make gondolieres pay an extra 10 Euros of taxes per trip. It is not legitimate to tax people based on race, sex, or country of origin - in fact, the entry fee scheme probably violates European Law, if unevenly applied (e.g. residents are not forced to pay).
See also: the German "foreigner's toll road" scheme.
How is that not locking people out also? It’s the same concept applied with a different metric.
Not to mention raising prices broadly hurts locals and not just visitors? Entry fees are a pretty simple solution, I hardly imagine it being bureaucratic.
In the UK at the same time, Blackpool "claimed around eight million visitors per year, three times as many as its nearest British rivals, still drawn largely from the mill towns of East Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool#Towards_the_present
My grandparents drove their entire family to the Grand Canyon back in the 1950s, and they were farmers/blue collar workers.
Then let’s say cultural tourism has been for the wealthy (until the post WWII era of affordable tuition led college students to travel on the cheap). The “grand tour” was for the wealthy, and Venice was certainly on that itinerary.
Instead of money, cultural sites could use knowledge to gatekeep. Require prospective visitors to pass a nontrivial quiz on the history and cultural significance of Venice to be able to enter. Take a short college course on the City and receive a lifetime pass. Those who expend the preparatory effort to truly appreciate Venice are permitted to physically visit the City, and the rest get access to streaming videos and stock photos into which to edit themselves.
Some sort of access control is needed. If you think today’s Venice is bad, wait until the Chinese tourists, with their exceptionally high tolerance for crowded conditions, start arriving en masse by rail. Congestion effects are nonlinear…
Your "cultural tourism has been for the wealthy" has a tautological component.
That is, the culture you likely refer to is the 'the culture of an upper class (an aristocracy) or of a status class (the intelligentsia)', quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_culture .
In the 1920s people went to Nashville to visit the Grand Old Opry and hear country music. People went to the Catskills to see vaudeville. How are these not examples of "cultural tourism" by the non-wealthy, pre-dating WWII?
19 million people went to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904. How is that not mass tourism?
> cultural sites could use knowledge to gatekeep
They certainly can. But there are many such ways to gatekeep. The article mention cash. What about "Tourists to Venice must be able to read and write Venetian"? The very choice of how to gatekeep reveals much the gatekeeper.
A question like "Which James Bond films were filmed in Venice?" focuses on a different culture than "What famous club-footed author swam the length of the Grand Canal and across the lagoon to the Lido?" (And both question set the focus on foreigners, rather than locals.)
A more practical set of gatekeeping questions might include: "It is illegal to feed the pigeons on St. Mark's Square. What is the fine? A) 50 euros, B) 100 euros, C) 200 euros, D) 500 euros".
> wait until the Chinese tourists ... start arriving en masse by rail
The xenophobic comment is uncalled for. Just how many Chinese people do you think will travel several days by train from China to visit Venice? And why Venice, when there are so many other places to visit which are closer?
> exceptionally high tolerance for crowded conditions
] Some researchers claim that tourists from Asian countries, whose places of residence are commonly characterised by congestion, are more tolerant of crowding than those from Western countries (Pearce, 1995), yet contradictory findings are suggested by emerging studies. For example, Chinese tourists show unexpectedly sensitive attitudes and low tolerance of tourist crowding in China compared with Westerners (Jin & Pearce, 2011). In addition, in Taiwan, tourists from Japan, Korea, Singapore and the US have been found to be negatively affected by the large numbers of mainland Chinese tourists, while no significant impact has been found among tourists from Hong Kong, the UK and Australia (Chou et al., 2014; Su et al., 2012). These contradictions imply that the influence of cultural distance is more complicated than previously noted (Bi & Lehto, 2018).
Chinese tourists may be more likely to avoid a crowded Venice than American tourists.
My parents went to Venice on holiday a few times in the 1970s. No, it was not overburdened with tourists. I have seen many photos and heard good stories. The insane levels seen in Venice and Amsterdam only started in the last 10 years.
I don't think that's coincidence. Cheap air travel opened a window on the world and absolutely ruined a lot of places. To the point that if you haven't visited Machu Picchu the consensus is that you haven't really lived. Tourists are roaches, they bring some much needed income to some places but they utterly ruin others, crowd out the locals, cause living spaces to be converted into hotels and make it impossible to buy food and drink at normal prices for the people that live there.
Will this actually help lower the numbers of tourists or is it just a cash grab?
I live in slovenia (neighbouring country), and venice, to me, is just one of those cities, lost to tourism... the number of locals is slowly going towards zero, and basically all of the cities infrastructure is going towards tourism.
We have a few cities going that way too, eg Piran or Kranjska Gora, where it's impossible to live in (since housing prices are way too high due to airbnb investments), the restaurants are pretty much all the same, catering tourists, prices are expensive, and there are very few stores with stuff locals actually need. Charging people a few euros to enter would still mean cities overcrowded with tourism (but a bit more expensive now), and still unlivable for locals.
Sadly, the same is happening to the city center of Ljubljana, where everything is slowly turning towards the tourists, and coming to ljubljana is pretty much the same as coming to Prague, Bratislava, etc... a few unique landmarks, and generic touristy restaurants, boat rides and expensive made-in-china souvenirs. ...and too expensive housing for locals, hard to find a general food store, noise pollution, etc.
Yup. Tourism in Venice has, ironically, destroyed most reason to visit it.
Dubrovnik, recently famous as the set of King's Landing in Game of Thrones, was probably once a charming medieval town, but is now one enormous T-shirt shop.
Planning on going to Italy, steering clear of Venice. I've been a few decades ago and it was fine, but the current crush of people is insane. I'm not looking to stand cheek to cheek at Piazza San Marco.
I grew up in a historic EU city which is slowly selling out as well. I do not think there is a way to stop it. However, if handled correctly, the tickets could bring cash needed for public projects in the city.
I think this is mostly a good idea. I’ve been to Venice a few times and the best trip was in the middle of February, when the rain and cold scared away summer crowds.
However, I do wish that the city managed to retain some of its former glory as a commercial center. It must have been an incredible place in the 13th and 14th centuries, long before tourism economics turned it into a place to visit and not a place to live.
Amsterdam stopped being a place to live two decades ago. I remember wanting to leave my house there and could not because of the crowds right outside my door and ended up pretty much locked in. It's the day I decided that I'm done with the city I was born in. If you take out the drunks the drugs and the tourists (and associated crime) house prices will drop back to something normal (10000 euros / square meter right now) and it might become a livable city again.
Amsterdam seems to have gotten better thanks to the pandemic. I go there on a regular basis to visit relatives with kids so I mostly visit parks and playgrounds and the drastic reduction of "bachelor party" type of tourists (coming for alcohol, drugs and prostitutes) has made the city a lot more pleasant to wander around.
Residents seem to have come to the same realization as it looks like they are going to outlaw selling drugs to tourists and move the red light district out of the city.
That being said, as long as there is still the museum/culture tourism and the many wealthy expatriates coming for the quality of life, I do not see the prices dropping back enough to make a difference for regular/local people.
Yes, I've heard more people say that the pandemic has helped make Amsterdam more liveable. But the same kind of backlash that is hitting Venice might happen there too. Essentially the pandemic has given us a short term window on alternative modes and some of those will hopefully stick (such as: work from home and a general reluctance to travel).
Agreed on the wealthy expats and that the locals will likely not return to the inner city. There just is too much money involved. I grew up all over Amsterdam and checked the prices for each of the places where I lived (that info is public) and was quite shocked to see that in spite of being fairly well off I probably could only afford the smallest (a 55 square meter apartment on Ferdinand Bol straat).
I live and grew up around the Nieuwmarkt, and completely disagree with this take. Sure, it is expensive, and sure, there are quite some tourists, but it is extremely liveable and nowhere near Venice levels.
Compared to Almere it's great... but there are many options besides Amsterdam that don't come with all the drawbacks, and cheaper to boot, especially if you have kids.
If you're single and like nightlife then I can see the draw, but otherwise it no longer is for me. But it's fine, I live 20 minutes away (Baarn) and have the advantages when I need them without the disadvantages.
Tourists only visit a pretty small part of the city. If you start at Amsterdam CS and cycle north, east or west for 10min you'll be in a tourist free neighborhood. Only southbound you'll have to cycle around 20min.
I am curious how you would end up in a situation where you wouldn't be able to open a door due to masses of bodies pressed against your door. Does your home open up directly onto a sidewalk?
There was quite a bit of discussions last year when an ambulance called for a resident emergency took some 15 minutes to drive 100-150 meters to get to the patient.
The center of Amsterdam is usually be considerably busier than that. And on festival days you can walk across the heads, but let's ignore those because they are clearly outliers.
I spent a few weeks one January staying with friends who live there, many years ago. Winter is definitely the best time to visit Venice. It's an unforgettable atmosphere walking around at night, with a bit of mist above the canals and hardly anyone around. There is still a decently-sized resident population, mostly not noticed by the tourists, and even in summer you don't have to go far from the most popular areas to find areas, bars and restaurants that are mostly missed by the cruise ship hordes.
I do worry that selling tickets basically legitimises the cruise ship hordes (and their behaviour, which isn't always very sociable) while perhaps discouraging casual independent travelers.
For anyone reading this and thinking of planning a trip to Venice in February, be aware that the Carnival often is in February and that's one of the busiest times...
> It must have been an incredible place in the 13th and 14th centuries, long before tourism economics turned it into a place to visit and not a place to live.
Trade routes and power centers were so different then, a different world. It likely will never reach that level of prosperity through non-tourism based economy.
In a way, it’s probably for the best. Italy doesn’t have a rapidly expanding population that needs more housing or denser urban centers. Freezing the cities as they are (and funding more research and archaeological digs) is probably the best outcome.
An interesting side-fact: Talking to a venetian during the pandemic they explained that their city is sat in a complicated political setup. The governening body (the Metropolitan City of Venice) actually consists of the city we know of Venice, but then also the surrounding islands and a decent chunk of the mainland.
Our venetian friend explained they'd wanted to implement laws like this but have always been hostage to the surrounding lands which see it as essentially a cash-cow.
It was the metropolitan for example (according to our friend) that outvoted Venice itself to allow cruiseboats back to Venice which is almost the sole cause of the over-population. Native venetians seem to dislike the cruise-boats given their tourists have a very different spending pattern compared to stay-over tourists. But the cruise-boats pay huge taxes straight into the municipal.
Oh man this is a familiar pattern. Do the surrounding areas also see Venice as a loathesome den of iniquity, which they’d destroy if it wasn’t the main source of income for the whole area? That’s how it is with Louisiana and New Orleans.
I think this is a good idea, as Venice has lots of issues caused by the excess of tourists (i.e.ground erosion), however they should also greatly limit cruise ships too (they say they want to do it from time to time, then do not follow through).
At the same time, I am a bit perplexed. Tickets are enforced with random checks, and if you do not have your ticket you will need to pay a fine. I am not sure that you need to pay on the spot tho. If that is the case and you have 50 people from - say - the US or China, you can just avoid paying. Who will come looking for you anyway? Yes, they can kick you out, but again this won't work if they find loads of people without tickets.
If it's anything like speeding tickets in most of Europe your place of residence determines whether you have to pay on the spot or not. For example Netherlands and Germany (and many others) have an agreement in place where your home country collects the fines so you don't have to pay on the spot. But if you're from a non-EU country you'll almost certainly have to pay on the spot because there would otherwise be no way to collect the money if you refused later.
I don’t think any foreign tourist from cruise ships or already travelling from nearby italian cities will be discouraged to pay 10 eur to go to venice. I assume only italian people will get affected.
> The local council has emphasised that there will be no limit to visitor numbers, only an increase in the entry fee should a certain number of visitors be reached on a particular day.
I think about this kind of thing with relation to airbnb in expensive cities, what is the ultimate free market end state? Anywhere where humans create unique culture and beauty will be hollowed out and given over to global tourists with money. That forces the locals far away from the interesting center core. Thinking about it over decades I envision it as almost like a Game of Life pattern where those pushed out eventually create a new interesting core while the old hollowed out core deteriorates into disney-fied caricature of itself. The cycle then repeats as the global tourist money chases the new hotness. Could it really be a cycle? I'm not sure. The tourist hotspots look mostly like negative-sum culture destruction to me.
I grew up in a sleepy coastal town in California. Nothing special except beaches really. A racetrack where thoroughbreds races annually. Beautiful, but nice and sleepy. And then as California grew and any beach town became a tier 1 locale, my hometown became more and more expensive to live in. For people in service careers, it became impossible, so they moved inland and commuted.
Now, unless you managed to buy a house very early, you're priced out. The amount of money in the town is crazy, and I would estimate that the amount of 1%ers is over 20% of the population. Compare this back to the early 70s and there wasn't nearly the same amount of variance in wealth.
It makes me sad that my childhood home has changed so much, but I don't think there's a way to prevent this from happening.
The fees would have to be very high to noticably reduce the number of tourists. I think it would work better if there were a quota system and a lottery.
I mean, it's kinda like a quota system. The fees go up after limits are reached, which is similar to a soft quota. And first-come, first-serve seems as reasonable as a lottery since it affects tourists who will need to book rooms and travel far in advance.
It is bit weird, but then looking at numbers it makes somewhat more sense. 5,2km^"2 old town and 15k+ daily visitors... It is not exactly great combination. Specially for place that wasn't designed for masses of tourist.
It's likely they will need a substantial revenue stream to prevent the city sinking further into the Adriatic given the problem with rising sea levels.
Time to look to the Dutch to help out with some levees/dykes sooner rather than later, as they did in the UD after Katrina
I visited Venice in the 90s within a few years of a trip to Disney World in Florida and I was definitely struck by the similarities, so this doesn't surprise me at all.
In both trips, I took a train to a dock and then boarded a small ferry with a bunch of other day-trip tourists and packaged tours, and we were all unloaded in a center area where we could spread out to all the attractions and rides / museums, churches and gondolas as the case may be, and the shops in both places were filled with the tackiest overpriced souvenirs possible.
The €5 to €10 ticket price doesn't compare at all though.
The € 10 ticket price is not nearly high enough considering that most visitors pay thousands for their cruise ship or flight + hotel to get there. It needs to be much higher to have any serious impact.
Not everyone coming to Venice is a wealthy citizen of a western country. Sure for a Brit or a German, 10 euro is nothing, but I remember coming on a trip from Poland(by coach!) years ago and yeah, basically we couldn't afford anything in Venice already, 5 euro coffee was insane(compared to Polish wages). So we walked around for the whole day, ate what we brought with us, and left. 10 euro fee would mean not going.
Could this be used by an EU country to effectively limit free movement?
Imagine Berlin enforces an €1000000000 entry fee, except on people meeting certain criteria. All residents of Germany are exempt, everyone who gets what effectively amounts to a Visa is exempt, everybody else has to pay up, except the amount is so ridiculous that nobody will actually do so.
The judges in courts are humans who look for intent. They're not machines who you can trick that easily. So no, no need to worry about a €1000000000 entry fee to Berlin.
Venice is tiny, old, decaying. You can just think of it as a museum. EU free movement does not give free access to all EU museums.
> The local council has emphasised that there will be no limit to visitor numbers, only an increase in the entry fee should a certain number of visitors be reached on a particular day.
So it's not about overcrowding, it's just about getting paid. If it were just about overcrowding they could just limit the number and keep a flat fee, the way park systems do. Or a lottery.
This is a classic and efficient way to allow people to visit Venice.
If you are early or come at a slow time the price is low, if the number of people increases, so do the price. So it's not a first come first serve, but an actual price of demand.
Virginia did that on a highway used by commuters to get into D.C. where they want a minimum travel speed of 40 mph (might be lower) and the more people get into it, the more the price rise. From $1, up to $30 on a rare occasion.
That is an interesting solution attempt to their problems. I hope they succeed, including in fixing the pollution to the lagoon. When pandemic started a lot of people noticed animals not seen in years shown up on the lagoon again as soon the big cruise ships were gone.
while i'm sure there were some instances of animals returning to venice during the lockdowns, many of the viral photos claiming to tell that story were either photoshops or photos of entirely different cities.
"We found a variety of pollutants from several sources, with sewage-associated and faecal bacteria accounting for up to 5.98% of microbial communities. Sewage-associated pollutants were most abundant close to the city centre." - ["Partitioning and sources of microbial pollution in the Venice Lagoon" (2021)](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...)
Water flowing directly through a city might not be pure. That doesn’t mean a centuries-old city unlike any other on earth and full of beautiful architecture has no appeal.
I went to Venice in 2015 IIRC. Took a ferry over from Croatia and stayed a couple of nights. Interesting city, definitely worth checking out, but I'll never go back. The bird/pigeon poop problem was so bad I threw away my roller luggage once I got home.
I also recommend staying a few nights so hopefully you get a day without cruise ships. Completely different city then.
It's certainly not the case with Amsterdam's canals. The water used to be flushed regularly, and dredging boats can frequently be seen pulling out bikes and other garbage. There's absolutely no foul odor coming from the water. It's not sterile, sure, but some areas are even safe to swim in.
I definitely would not advise you to swim in the Amsterdam canals. And if you do plan on doing something like that make very sure that you have a tetanus shot, don't have any open wounds and don't ingest any water.
I wonder… I mean of course it’s easy to imagine rivers going through large cities being dirty. But my understanding is most large cities do not dump sewage into rivers except in cases of major flooding.
And there’s also stuff like New York putting in all those clams to clean up a river or… something like that anyways.
> Some daytrippers are exempt from paying the entry fee, although they will still have to book. These include residents of the Veneto region, students, and those visiting family members in the city.
This seems against basic human rights of free circulation.
How do you arrive at "free circulation" being a "basic human right." I've never heard that.
Seems pretty common to not necessarily be allowed to go anywhere you please just because you want to. Maybe it is an extreme example, but I know I don't want people freely circulating inside my house.
Because it literally is a right within the EU. The US calls it the right of free movement which is a derived right from the privileges and immunities clause of the constitution.
If you think this wasn't a right have y'all never wondered why states don't simply ban people they don't want?
As for the justification for why it's a basic human right
> It is interesting to note that the Articles of Confederation had an explicit right to travel; it is now thought that the right is so fundamental that the Framers may have thought it unnecessary to include it in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
Let's say you have a right to travel down a road with a bridge on it. Then 1000 people decide to travel across it at once and it collapses. Obviously each individual doing their own thing isn't a problem, but when a lot of people do that thing it becomes a problem.
We all love the idea of freedom, but it always requires responsibility. When individuals do not take this responsibility then issues like the tragedy of the commons manifest.
After they limited the number of people that could cross at any given time, and then closed the bridge 2 days later. Basically the exact scenario described above as "hypothetical".
It was overwhelmed... yes it was a design flaw. That's the point.
So put a fee on the bridge or a queuing system. People are still 'free' to move on the bridge. In fact bridge taxes and highway taxes are quite common.
I live in Veneto.
Once I went to a friend's friend small, vertival apartment in Burano Island, door at ground level directly in front of a public square. He lives there few months of the year.
He told us how tourists went into his house thinking it was an attraction, making photos of his stuff like crazy. Once he had to threat an asian tourist with a knife to get him out.
This is long overdue, I hope they succeed. Tourists has lost all respect for an old, hard to live, beautiful city, and for the (shrinking number of) people that still live there.
On weekends from april to october Venice is almost unbearable for normal people.
Does that seems a museum? That's the problem with Venice (stupid) tourists, they think it's a open air museum, it's not, it still is a city with people living there.
To be fair, that totally looks like a tourist attraction to me. Where I come from the only places painted in bright colours like that are theme parks or children's play grounds. No "real" housing would be painted like that, so the assumption may have been that these must be for tourists because why else would they look like that? Of course different cultures are different though (this is why we travel in the first place - to see and experience something different) and things will therefore be different than they are back home, so people should check their assumptions when traveling.
I guess what I am getting at is that people's cultural upbringing is different, and so their expectations are different. This is unconscious bias but for houses I guess. That is not to excuse people for entering someone's home without permission, but that does look like an attraction to me. Personally I would not just walk in unless it was obvious, but then everyone is different.
People should learn something before visiting a foreign country, especially a unique city like real Venice, not a cheap copy in Las Vegas.
Or Gran Canaria, or Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Norway, Singapore, Mexico, Brasil...
World cultures ignorance is staggering in some Anglo-Saxon countries...
It's not.
National parks, museums and lots and lots of places requires tickets to enter, are they also against freedom of movement?
No one forbids you to go there, no one forbids you to stay and live there.
Treat this city as a one, big, crowdy museum.
> NYC DOT owns, operates, and maintains 789 bridges and tunnels throughout New York, including the Brooklyn, Ed Koch Queensboro, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges, 24 movable bridges, and four tunnels. There are no tolls on bridges operated by NYC DOT. Some bridges in New York City are operated by other agencies.
Also, you can walk across many of the bridges to Manhattan:
First, two points that are less relevant, but I feel like I need to respond to:
1) It might be true that you can get from other boroughs to Manhattan without paying a bridge toll, but getting to those other boroughs without paying a toll along the way is hard.
2) Walking or biking also limits the areas that you can come from
Both of these combined are equivalent to Venice's free tickets for people in the surrounding zone.
But, in focusing on bridges and tunnels, you missed the important new development in NYC. Manhattan is going to charge people a toll directly for using the streets to drive. I think it's six months old at this point.
So, yes, if you live close enough you don't need a car, you can get there. But I challenge a non-NYC resident to do so in a realistic way that doesn't involve mass transit.
You moved the goalposts across the planet. Manhattan is an island. You can walk or bike across almost every bridge free of charge. If you want to drive into the city you’ll have to pay a one way bridge toll. It’s not a fee per person per day, it’s a one way fee to cross an expensive bridge or tunnel.
On the tolling it actually hasn’t happened yet and it’s only applicable south of 60th. Free to drive anywhere in NYC at no additional cost except for the dense traffic riddled area of lower Manhattan.
You could also fly directly into NYC and move about by the magic of walking. It’s free. Unfortunately, airfare is also not free and so based on your logic NYC has an airfare surcharge.
I recently took a train from Rome to Tuscany. I was outraged that Tuscany charged me a train fee to enter the area.
How did I move the goalposts? I mentioned mass transit options in my first post.
I wasn't aware of the limitations on the tolls inside Manhattan to below 60th. I can see how you may have focused on the bridge/tunnel tolls (and maybe I should have been more explicit), but that's the word they have been using for those charges.
> Free to drive anywhere in NYC at no additional cost except for the dense traffic riddled area of lower Manhattan.
This is similar to how you are free to go anywhere in the PATREVE metro area except for the dense, canal-filled area of Venice.
> Unfortunately, airfare is also not free and so based on your logic NYC has an airfare surcharge.
Apparently LGA (unlike JFK or EWR) is considered walkable. I didn't think it was, but it is with 3 hours.
AFAIK, unlike tolls and mass transit, no portion of the airfare goes to NYC, nor does NYC have any direct control over the costs. So it's a good counterexample.
> Try to get to Manhattan without paying the city a toll, for a helicopter permit, or a public transit ticket. I'll wait.
Which was trivially answered. But now you want convenience.
I am not sure why you’re fixated on this. Venice charges you per person per day to enter and stay in Venice. This is in addition to highway tolls on the way to Venice and tolls to cross the bridge to enter Venice. Roads aren’t free. Bridges aren’t free.
NYC does not charge a fee per person per day, but you will similarly pay to cross bridges.
So to recap for you:
In Italy you pay to travel to Venice via your preferred method of travel. In Venice you pay a fee per person per day.
In the US you pay to travel to NYC via your preferred method of travel. In NYC you do not pay a fee per person per day.
I've got to wonder why Venice wouldn't just do something similar to NYC instead of having an "entry fee". I would think that adding/raising city fees on train, bus tickets, parking, boat landing, etc would accomplish similar congestion control, without ever needing "ticket checkers" scattered throughout the city. They could also set the parking fee to 4x the individual fee, and have easy price discrimination for price insensitive couples.
The entry fee is the only way to do congestion pricing that is predictable and scaling. To achieve those it has to get done in advance. If the cheapest tickets have been sold in advance for the day you want, you can still get a ticket but the price went up. Meanwhile you need to know if you'll be able to get into Venice (or afford to) when booking tickets or selecting hotels.
So your plan works if you just want to raise money/raise the cost to discourage people. It doesn't work if you plan on increasing the cost to act as a soft cap on the tourists per day and you want people to know if they got in on a given day.
I don't really understand what you're saying. How does needing to book two things (transportation and entry ticket [0]) make for a more responsive market of people deciding to come/not? It seems like people would be more likely to get a deal on transportation and then pay higher congestion entry, or vice-versa.
Meanwhile, baking the entry fee into modes of transportation bundles it all in one ticket, letting people make one decision to go/no go. Each of those entry modes has a given (or at least designatable) capacity, and would have its own increasing price curve administered by the ticket seller. This has the added bonus of reserving capacity on each transportation mode for the locals traveling at the last minute.
[0] Hotel seems to bake in the entry ticket, which actually keeps the book-factor at the standard tourism "2" (transport+hotel), and only increases it to 2 for day trippers.
Congestion charges seem common enough. If that can be applied to cars why not just people?
And places like Venice are rather special exceptions we can accept and live with. It is clear that something should be done for public good, also the now limited number of tourists.
That only talks about being able to travel from one country to another within the EU. Not that any country can't restrict movement within one area in it's borders.
I'm sure you can't freely wander onto a military base in any EU country and claim it's your right of free movement to go anywhere you want.
Yes but on the other extreme if a state in the EU tried to create a 1 acre free movement zone within the country and then restricted movement everywhere else they would run afoul of the law. It's not black and white.
The question is where restricting access to an entire city lives.
The question is what constitutes restriction. They aren't telling anybody they can't go there at all, just that they have to make a reservation and pay a fee. Likewise you can travel into any EU country, but that doesn't mean they can't require you to show a passport.
well there are such things as gated communities, where only residents are allowed through the gate. it's not difficult to imagine this being extended to a kind of special-economic-zone where only members are allowed. in fact I believe that's a plot point in snow crash.
Rights are only asserted when someone thinks to limit them. You also don't have the right to breathe air because no one has been so insane as to ban that.
I can't think of another time an entire city was placed behind a paywall, other than in communist countries where you need a passport to travel between cities.
Probably more will follow this terrible example and the world will be a worse place for it.
On one hand, this may help reduce congestion in the city during peak tourism season. On the other hand, paying to visit an entire city (and literally having to book a visit ahead of time) seems incredibly odd; I certainly am not a fan of the idea.
If raising money via tourism is the goal, a more widespread tourism tax on food and services would likely both raise funds and partially reduce tourism overload, without the burden of requiring visitors to go through the arcane process of booking a visit.
The goal is probably discourage short term visitors. In the many, MAAAAANY past HN topics about this, complaints about them were constant.
Basically Cruise Ships barge in (sometimes literally, hitting other boats or even buildings), then people climb out, make a mess, annoy everyone (including the tourists that are on hotels), then leave again, since they are sleeping on the ship anyway.
Lots of stories here on HN of how the day tourists often don't even spend any money, they probably paid to eat on the cruise ship, so they just climb out, take photos, roam around, pollute, then go eat and sleep back on the ship and don't buy anything.
Same thing happens all over. Cruise ships and the people on them make otherwise enjoyable places absolutely terrible. After my first experience with it it’s something I check now and I won’t go to any place that cruise ships frequent.
Darn those people-who-arent-me wanting to go to the cool places I want to go to. They should be kicked out so that people like me can enjoy the places without all that riff-raff running amok
i mostly agree with your tack here, but there's something to be said for pulling up your boat of 5,000 people to the dock of a town, I'd be curious to know how democratic of a decision that is.
On a related note, I highly recommend the book "Do Travel Writers Go To Hell", written by a Lonely Planet author who reflects on the conundrum of publishing the best beaches and bars he finds, knowing they will be overrun with tourists as soon as the book is out. (I don't recall if the book is nonfiction)
elitist because he found a local dive bar on a Brazillian beach with good vibes, that he knows will not be the same once he directs a flow of Americans toward it?
It's about knowing the consequences - not just keeping the bar a secret for his own benefit, but knowing he's going to ruin the experience for everyone else who liked the peace and quiet (of course, the owners of the bar are likely to be grateful for the uptick in business)
At the risk of drawing too much excitement to this thread: if it is unacceptable and inherently racist to be upset at millions of people per year coming across your border uninvited to stay permanently, why is it super cool and totally fine to flip out about hundreds of thousands of people (who already file identity paperwork and pay travel taxes) who just want to visit for a few hours and buy some overpriced tchotchkes, coffee, and gelatos?
It does seem to me that if the first is an inalienable human right, then surely the second must also be.
Perhaps the idea of somebody coming to a place, setting up shop, and participating in a local community feels pretty inherently good, while somebody showing up, buying a coffee, then bouncing does not feel so good.
I do think that tourist areas are ultimately not “owned” by the locals, but there is a truth to tourism economies sucking the oxygen out of building a more sustainable economy that would benefit people more.
A hotel is maybe good for some jobs, but maybe some other commerces or industries would actually make a place less dependent on the whims of tourists. Externalities aren’t fungible of course (how much litter is having one more hotel job worth).
Places like Paris tend to work well because there’s huge amount of infrastructure built out for large population fluctuations like trains, and ultimately it ends up benefiting people well. Compare that to many island tourist destination where you basically have tourist-only infrastructure.
Cruise ship arrivals were only 7% of Venice visitors in 2018. They have already been diverted to a nearby industrial port since reopening after the pandemic
There are costs for tourist visas in some countries. There are costs/permits for particular areas (national parks, public buildings, etc). Maybe it feels odd just because there's not much precedent for this particular tier.
The price and details seem pretty reasonable to me. Fundraising to improve the place and reduce burdens on residents dealing with but not profiting from tourism seems smart.
I visited Venice almost 20 years ago, and it was fairly miserable while the daytrippers were there tromping over bridges, but improved dramatically in the evenings and early mornings. I was a backpacker on the road for a year with a constrained budget, but would've been fine with paying $10 had we not stayed overnight.
Flat-out limiting numbers would be a greater restraint, I think. There are a number of places (many in the USA) where visitation is via limited permit - things like climbing Half Dome or visiting The Wave, now climbing Angel's Landing. Even driving through the main roads of Glacier NP or Yosemite NP.
> Fundraising to improve the place and reduce burdens on residents dealing with but not profiting from tourism seems smart.
That's absolutely fine, but I feel like a reservation/ticketing system such as the one proposed is not the best solution. Again, a tourism tax across the city might achieve the same effect without such a system.
In my opinion, the cost (within reason) is absolutely irrelevant. Raising money for the city and locals is a great effort and I applaud it. It is simply the requirement of yet another "hoop to jump through" that bothers me. After years of a pandemic with legally questionable restrictions and requirements throughout daily life, I simply don't want more "hoops to jump through".
Unless I'm reading the wrong site, it looks like the visa application fee for someone eligible for the US visa-waiver and ESTA looks to be $14. Not sure if this was an intentional US-3W joke though. Non-VWP looks like Tourism B-2 and $160?
I wouldn't have guessed China and India are third-world. From a quick search, both seem to have visa costs. Thailand, Turkey, also. Someone from China visiting the UK seems to cop UKP100 for a Standard Visitor visa. I'm pretty sure I've paid visa charges for various not-overly-third-world countries in the past.
I'm Australian. To visit the USA as a tourist, it's US$160 for a Tourism B-2 visa or US$21 for the ESTA under VWP. I might be missing another option as a tourist, but the ESTA is certainly the encouraged option and one I've used a couple of times before.
I find it somewhat concerning that charging tourist visa fees for third-world visitors is listed as an exception, as if the fees and often more laborious interviews and documentation that the majority of people in the world face doesn’t negate the so-called freedom of movement in virtually every western country.
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Venice is an amazing city, and it's not as expensive as people think, if you plan to stay long term.
When the Covid-19 situation got better in early 2022, TONS of tourists came back, and Venice is now more crowded than it was before the pandemic.
Residents (of the historical city center, or the "main" Venice), down to a total of about 50,000 (from a peak of ~175,000 [0]), are really angry at the overcrowding and are looking for solutions.
In certain weekends this year, the number of visitors reached 130,000 per day, which is about twice as much as the city can support without deterioration of city life and services.
Entry tickets, if handled properly, could be a great way to fix the issue.
The current solution has some flaws, and I don't believe that it will solve the issue properly. (overnight visitors don't pay; ferry rides are not integrated in the ticket; etc).
I believe that the right structure should include a combination of:
1) expensive tickets (€50 per day per person) that allow you to come regardless of any other limitation.
2) advance purchase tickets (€5 per day per person)
3) progressive tickets (starting at €5 per day per person, but going as high as €25 when the number of visitors in a given day approaches 60,000).
Also, the parking system (Tronchetto and Piazzale Roma), owned by private companies, should introduce a similar progressive ticket, but the extra income should go to the municipality, not to the private company.
The extra money earned this way should go towards improving the logistics of the city, easing the pressure that tourism puts on the residents.
My 0.02.
[0]: https://allaboutvenice.com/venice-population/