Explained | Venice's new €5 entry fee for day trippers

News of this entry fee has sparked debate, and travellers are trying to figure out how the new rule will affect them.

Venice is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. While the ones who have visited the city, stay in complete awe of it for a lifetime, those who haven't, keep Venice in their bucket list.

In the past 30 years, Venice suffered due to over tourism, reported BBC. Currently, this pristine Italian city welcomes around 30 million tourists annually, which is far above than the 50,000 Venetians who call the city home.

This month, Venice's municipal authorities announced plans to fight these issues with a controversial move: charging day trippers a €5 entrance fee. This will make Venice the first city in the world to charge visitors to enter its premises.

With the travellers left to figure out how this new rule will affect them, news of the entry fee has sparked debate.

Why charge entry fee?

Overtourism is putting pressure on Venice's infrastructure, making life unpleasant for both residents and travellers alike.

However, there's more to Venice's problems than what meets the eye. The city, built on water, faces risks as tourism explosion will encourage more number of boats in the city's canals.

Two years ago, the Italian government banned cruise ships from mooring inside Venice's city centre partly due to the damage these large ships cause to buildings and the seabed.

Last August, UNESCO threatened to put Venice on its list of World Heritage Sites that are at risk due to "insufficient efforts" to preserve the city. Clearly, something had to be done about this.

When will it start?

Though the date is yet to be announced, starting 2024, Venice will initiate the process of charging an entry fee. However, it will coincide with the peak tourism dates to deter people from entering the city during busy days.

Why only day trippers?

Day trippers account for two-thirds of the tourists visiting Venice. These are mostly composed of cruise ships, large tour groups, and people coming from the surrounding Veneteo region.

According to Davide Bertocchi, professor of tourism geography at the University of Udine, day trippers do not have much economic value to Venice yet they put significant pressure on its infrastructure.

Bertocchi explained, these large groups usually follow a standard 3-4-hour itinerary focused on landmarks like Saint Mark's square and the Rialto bridge, creating unsustainable congestion in the city's tiny streets and 1,000-year-old bridges. Most of the time, they do not spend money to visit churches or museums or to shop or eat at locally owned facilities.

The entrance fee is different from the tourist tax in Venice because this is applicable only to those who come for the day and are not staying the night in the city, unlike the tourism tax which is charged on the hotel bill.

The idea of entrance fee has received mixed reactions so far. While trade associations seem hopeful of the development, Venice Day Trips which is a tour operator offering cultural itineraries in Venice and the nearby region believe that the city needs "a closed number [of tourists] with a clear booking process."

Despite the criticism, the authorities want to "test" the fee out since they cannot put a cap on the number of tourists like Machu Picchu or Antarctica because of the country's constitutional right of free movement.