The popular European city of Venice is taking measures to ensure the safety and future of its famous floating city.
In recent years there has been growing concern about the impact on Venice of overtourism and how the increased footfall in recent years is affecting locals who live within its hallowed walls.
As part of a series of new measures, city officials have said they will introduce a new ticket scheme in 2025, one which will see tourists charged to visit Venice and increase the price of late bookings.
Under the current system, the number of days which tourists have to buy a ticket to enter Venice is 29. Under the new rules, this will rise to 54 whilst tourists who book less with less than four days’ notice will fork out €10 per day as opposed to the current €5.
The new measures come as European tourism hotspots continue to fight back against an overtourism crisis that has affected several famous locations including the Canary Islands, Barcelona, and the Balearic Islands.
Speaking to the Times, Simone Venturini claimed Venice was leading the way in dealing with overtourism and that it was reacting “proactively” rather than reactively.
He explained: “Venice has gone from being the city most exposed to and criticised for the phenomenon of overtourism, to being the city that is reacting to this phenomenon the earliest and most proactively on the global stage.”
Despite the new measures, there are concerns that this won’t stop thousands of people from visiting the city and putting more pressure on local infrastructure. Earlier this year the introduction of strict measures failed to stop waves of tourists after the introduction of the entrance fee.
City councillor for the Tutta la Citta Insieme part Giovanni Andrea Martini told the I that the ticketing system had been “a real failure”.
He exclaimed: “After the years of Covid, tourism in Venice has undergone a huge increase, exceeding the threshold reached in 2019. The consequences for Venetian residents are very serious.
“On the contrary, we have the number of entrances that are higher by more than 10,000 tourists on average per day compared to last year. As a system of flow management, the entrance ticket has been a real failure.”
There are also concerns that the city itself could be sinking under the sheer weight of tourists and climate change. It is known that the city is sinking at a rate of around one to two millimetres every year, but authorities are concerned other factors could exacerbate this.
To push back against this, officials have invested around £4bn in a series of gates known as MOSE (Experimental Electromechanical Module) that aim to stop the tide from engulfing Venice. As recently as October 2020, they were used to protect Venice during an unusually high tidal event.