Soon, you’ll have to decide if seeing the Venice canals is worth the price of admission.
Driving the news: Next year, Venice will become the first city to start charging an entrance fee for day-tripping tourists to ease overcrowding during the city’s busiest days, per The Globe and Mail. The fee aims to disincentivize tourists from visiting on 30-40 peak days.
- The city sees between eight and 10 million day-trippers annually, without including those who stay overnight. Most tourism is concentrated between July and August.
Why it matters: Over-tourism in places like Venice has gotten so bad that locals are not just annoyed but being priced out. The population has fallen from 150,000 to 50,000 since the 1970s, and there are currently more beds in the city dedicated to tourists than residents.
Venice isn’t the only city putting its foot down…
- Earlier this year, Amsterdam launched an ad campaign that was blunt about the type of tourists it wants, literally telling rowdy British lads to “stay away.”
- In 2022, Barcelona took steps to limit the number of visitors, cracking down on the size of tour groups and introducing noise restrictions, among other measures.
- Bhutan, a country in South Asia, enforces a daily tourist visa of US$200, referring to it as a sustainable development fee. Sure enough, it keeps numbers under control.
- Meanwhile, destinations like Valencia, Vienna, and Zagreb are trying to cash in on more tourists the old-fashioned way: By implementing or raising their tourist taxes.
Yes, but: European cities are some of the costliest destinations in the world. Considering a coffee in Venice’s town square is about €15, a tourist tax in the €2-5 range probably won’t get too many travellers to say, “Oh well, too rich for my blood,” and cancel their trip.—LA