The period costumes indicate that it is carnival time in Venice. Confetti invades the streets, a hundred colorful gondolas travel the canals. It would be low season in any other city in the world, but not here. Visitors from all over walk the bridges and narrow alleys in a daze, making it difficult to get around in a city where mobility is quite peculiar. Some have come to spend the weekend, but others, only on Sunday. These will soon be the guinea pigs of the Venice City Council's latest initiative to combat mass tourism: a toll of five euros a day for those who want to enjoy the streets without having booked a hotel.
Finally, and after many delays since the entry ticket was announced, a measure that has sparked a great debate in the city will come into force in 2024. The experiment at the moment will only be requested for 29 days this year, between April 25 and July 14. Those interested who want to go will have to book their entry on an online platform of the City Council that is already in operation and where all the indicated dates are well marked on the calendar.
There will be no shifts, given that in 2018 they were already tested to regulate access flows and it was a disaster: they barely lasted half an hour after a group of protesters damaged them in front of the cameras. Those in charge of controlling this will be municipal guards who will be able to request the reservation code at the main access points from anyone walking on the chosen days. Fines for not complying will range from 50 to 300 euros.
"The objective - explained the Councilor for Tourism, Simone Venturini - is to find a new balance between the demands of those who live in Venice, those who work or study there, and those who want to visit and get to know Venice". Because, he considers, the tourism of those who do not stay to sleep in the city "complicates the management of flows on certain days", so they prefer to bet on visitors who want to get to know Venice better and "take the appropriate time, at least one or two nights, to get in tune and discover the artistic heritage, traditions and craftsmanship”.
The system has created many doubts, so that municipal officials these days are doing an exercise in pedagogy. To begin with, the amount will be five euros per person for those over 14 years old, and no reductions are planned, but there is a long list of people who will be exempt. It will not have to be paid by Venetians or those who go there every day to work or study at universities, but neither will their relatives up to the third degree or friends - they can prove it with a voucher provided by their relatives -, residents of the Veneto region, those who go there to participate in sports competitions or those who go there to the hospital. Nor, obviously, those who have a hotel reservation or other tourist accommodation structure, given that they will already pay the corresponding municipal tax there. The idea is that only visitors who go to Venice for the day need the ticket, and contribute to the municipal coffers of a city under great tourist pressure.
There is reluctance among the inhabitants. For example, Paolo, owner of a small hotel in the San Polo neighborhood, very close to the old market, complains about the complications this will represent for hoteliers. "Now we have to explain to the tourists when they make the reservation that they have to fill out a form through the platform, and even we don't know how to do it," he says, while attending to a family of Americans. "It is a way of accepting that we are in a museum, and not in a city. This will only serve the mayor to raise money", laments Gloria, who works in a restaurant in the Cannareggio district. Mario, a bar waiter at the iconic Hotel Monaco, thinks that the initiative is fine as long as this money is used in the maintenance of Venice. "It's this mayor's umpteenth firefighter idea. It won't do anything", protested Giulia, born in Venice, while waiting for the vaporetto.
"The ticket to Venice is necessary: the goal is not to close the city, but not to make it explode", retorted the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, on Monday. "We need everyone's understanding - he asked - because we can't all be together at the same time".
