Venice to fine tourists €300 for unpaid entry fees
Visitors must pay day trip fee, mayor declares in attempt to reduce city’s extreme overcrowding
TOURISTS in Venice face being fined €300 (£255) if they fail to pay a newly-introduced entrance fee aimed at minimising overcrowding.
The northern Italian city had initially insisted that the day-tripper fee was not a tax and would not lead to long queues of people lining up to pay the charge.
However, during a briefing yesterday, mayor Luigi Brugnaro described the fee as a tax and conceded that lines could form at the official entry points.
Tourists who are not staying in a hotel or other kind of accommodation in Venice will need to pay an entrance fee of €5.
Mr Brugnaro said personnel have been trained to verify that tourists who are not staying in Venice have either a QR code confirming payment of the fee or an exemption voucher.
Exemptions will be issued for a variety of reasons, including to access the city for work, school or medical care, as well as people born in Venice, and residents of the Veneto region.
Mr Brugnaro said that anyone found beyond designated control points without the required documentation will be subject to fines.
These will range from €50 to €300, plus the maximum entrance fee allowed by law, set at €10.
“There is no tax without controls,” Mr Brugnaro told foreign reporters in Rome.
Visitors will be subject to random, not systematic, checks, he said.
There will be no turnstiles or physical barriers placed at entry points, such as the Venezia Santa Lucia train station, one of the main gateways into the lagoon city.
Those staying in the city will be exempt because they already pay a tourist tax as part of their accommodation fee. Venice welcomes up to 30 million tourists a year.
The day-tripper fee was announced last year after Italy was added to the United Nation’s list of endangered heritage sites owing to “overtourism”. While tourism is a key source of income for Venice, many residents have long baulked at the hordes of people visiting it every day.
They claim the city has steadily lost residents over several decades due to a lack of affordable housing and jobs unrelated to tourism.
In 2021, Italy’s government banned giant cruise liners, which for years towered over the ornate squares of Venice, from coming close to famous landmarks such as the Piazza San Marco, ending years of disputes with groups of residents.
While many community groups praised the decision, they said it was far from enough to solve the problem of overtourism.
Critics such as the civic association Ocio have been saying for years that the proliferation of apartments rented out to tourists has considerably raised the cost of living for ordinary residents.
They also say day trippers spend relatively little money but make work for the city which has to take on extra street cleaning and refuse collections. In particular, they sounded a warning last summer when the number of tourist beds officially overtook the number of residents, which has dwindled to under 50,000, from 175,000 in 1950s.
They said the imbalance drains the city of services, clogging its tight alleyways and water buses with suitcase-toting tourists – pushing residents to the mainland. It remains unclear whether the entry tax will discourage day trippers from visiting Venice.
Officials have emphasised that the scheme aims to reduce crowds on peak days, encourage longer visits and improve the quality of life for residents. Venice’s surrounding islands, including glass-making Murano, are also outside the pilot programme, which is being tested on 29 days, starting with an Italian national holiday on April 25.
It will run through to mid-july, including most weekends and will be operational from 8.30am to 4pm.
‘There can be no tax without controls’