By Crispian Balmer
ROME (Reuters) – Venice’s experimental payment system for tourists only had a limited impact on reducing crowds in the lagoon city, meaning prices will almost certainly be hiked next year, a politician who led the project said on Friday.
In a world first, the famed Italian destination introduced a 5-euro ($5.44) charge in April for daytrippers arriving on particularly congested days, hoping the levy would deter some people from visiting.
The pilot scheme, which has been watched closely by other European tourist hotspots, covered just 29 days and will end on Sunday, opening the way for a period of consultation to decide how to proceed with the project in future.
Simone Venturini, the city councillor responsible for tourism and social cohesion, said the initial assessment was positive and confirmed the system would be renewed in 2025, but acknowledged that there were still large crowds.
“On some weekends there were less people than the same time last year … but no one expected that all the day trippers would miraculously disappear,” he told Reuters, speaking by telephone from Venice.
“It will be more effective in the coming years when we increase the number of days and lift the price,” he added, without saying how much visitors might have to pay in 2025.
The city council is looking to discourage daytrippers, especially during weekends and holidays when visitors can top 100,000 – double the number of local residents. People with hotel reservations have not had to pay the levy.
Not everyone in Venice, which is a UNESCO world heritage site, thinks the scheme should continue.
“It has been a total failure. The city is still packed with tourists,” said opposition councillor Giovanni Andrea Martini, adding that the number of people paying the charge had fallen as word spread that the threatened fines were not materialising.
Venturini acknowledged there had been “very few, or probably no fines”, but said it had been a deliberately soft start. “In this experimental phase, rather than fining people, we have focused on informing them,” he said.
Martini advocated instead a free booking system for visitor slots to prevent lower-income families from being priced out, but that was able to track prospective tourist arrivals.
“We need to be able to warn people that if they come on certain days they are not going to have a good time,” he said, adding that the long-term goal should be to draw back full-term residents who have drained away from the city in recent years as short-term lets increasingly dominate the housing market.
($1 = 0.9189 euros)
(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Helen Popper)
