To limit the number of people visiting the lagoon city and better manage the visitors who outnumber residents, a mandatory day trippers’ reservation and a fee are introduced in Venice starting in January.
The officials on Friday mentioned that these new rules will come into effect starting January 16, 2023.
Tourists who choose not to stay overnight in hotels or other lodgings will have to sign up online for the day they plan to come and pay a fee.
These range from 3 to 10 euros ($3.15 to $10.50) per person, depending on booking and whether it’s peak season or the city is very crowded.
There will be a fine of over 300 Euros if tourists fail to show the QR code for the same if stopped and asked for the day pass.
Roughly, 4/5th of tourists who visit Venice stay for a day. In the year 2019, over 19 million tourists visited Venice and over a fraction of the tourists stayed for a night.
The tourism commissioner did not mention anything about limiting the number of tourists “We won’t talk about number cutoffs. We’re talking about incentives and disincentives,” Simone Venturini told a news conference in Venice.
The reservation-and-fee approach had been discussed a few years ago but was put on hold during the pandemic. Covid-19 travel restrictions saw tourism in Venice decline due to restrictions and this has let Venetians have their city practically to themselves, for the first time in decades.
With the new rule, Venice aims to “find this balance between (Venetian) resident and long-term and short-term” visitors, Venturini said, promising that the new system “will be simple for visitors” to manage.
He billed Venice as the first city in the world to put such a system for day-only visitors in the place.
Exceptions to the day-tripper fees include children younger than 6, people with disabilities and those owning vacation apartments in Venice, provided they can show proof they pay real estate taxes.
Cruise ships contribute to the hordes of visitors swarming Venice’s maze of narrow streets, especially near St. Mark’s Square, when they disembark day-trippers for a few hours.
Those visitors will have to pay, too, unless their cruise liner company pays a set fee to Venice.
