Venice’s city council has announced that it plans to experiment with a tourist admission fee of €5 (R103) for day-trippers next year.
It’s an attempt to manage the flow of tourists in the city and will be applied in a 30-day trial during Northern hemisphere spring bank holidays and summer weekends of 2024, when tourist numbers are likely to once more be at their highest. Visitors over the age of 14 years will have to pay the fee, reports skift.com.
Simone Venturini of the city’s Tourist Council, said the aim of the fee was to balance the rights of those who live, study or work there with those who visit, rather than a money-making scheme. The fee would only cover the cost of administering the measure.
The tourist fee was initially proposed in 2019, but postponed due to the global pandemic, which kept tourists away. It was later postponed for technical and procedural reasons.
Meanwhile, visitors have returned to Venice in droves, outnumbering the 50 000 residents of the city and overwhelming its narrow alleys and canals.
Recently, the city narrowly escaped being added to the Heritage Site danger list – Unesco said the city faced irreversible damage due to climate breakdown and mass tourism.
