Day-trippers to Venice on peak visitor weekends next year will be charged, it has been announced.
The city’s council on Tuesday agreed to a test period – with final approval set to be given on September 12th.
The sum, €5 per day-tripper, is “not a tool for making cash”, the authority said in a statement.
It is there to improve the quality of life for Venice’s dwindling number of full-time residents as well as overnight visitors, who already pay a lodging tax and will be exempt from the charge.
The pilot will last for about 30 days and take place on spring weekends spanning Italian national holidays and on summer weekends.
The exact dates will be set in the coming weeks.
“The aim is to disincentivise daily tourism in certain periods, in line with the fragility and uniqueness of the city,” the council’s statement said.
Those exempt from the fee include people who commute to work in Venice or on the smaller islands, students, residents of the Veneto region, which includes the city, and those who pay taxes on local property.
The fee will be applied to day-trippers over the age of 14.
Roughly four-fifths of all tourists come to Venice just for the day.
In 2019, the last full year of tourism before the Covid pandemic, about 19 million day-trippers visited Venice and provided just a fraction of the revenue of those who stayed for at least one night.
With just a few hours to spend in Venice, day-trippers tend to flock to St Mark’s Square and other tourist musts, adding to pedestrian traffic that makes walking down the city’s narrow streets or over some of its bridges a slow slog.
The fee strategy was first discussed a few years ago but put on hold during the pandemic.
Travel restrictions during much of the outbreak saw tourism in Venice nearly vanish — and let Venetians have their city practically to themselves for the first time in decades.
Last year, an advance sign-up plan for day-trippers was envisioned in addition to the fee.
Tuesday’s statement by the city did not indicate if consideration will eventually be given to capping the number of day-trippers at certain times.
Mass tourism to Venice started in the mid-1960s and visitor numbers have kept climbing.
Meanwhile, the number of Venetians living in the city has steadily decreased due to congestion, the high cost of delivering food and other goods in car-less Venice, and frequent flooding that damages homes and businesses.
In 1970, the historic heart of Venice — excluding inhabitants living on tiny, quaint Venetian lagoon islands Murano and Burano — had a full-time population of about 110,000.
By last year, that number had shrunk to barely 50,000.
