Venice to Charge an Entry Fee

[donaldsc]

Although I don't think that it will impact cruisers, Venice is going to start an entry fee system for Venice daytrippers - https://www.businessinsider.com/venice-tourist-entry-fee-book-in-advance-climate-crisis-overtourism-2021-8.  There will be no charge if you stay in a hotel overnight so people who arrive early to Venice to get on their ship will not be impacted.  Not sure what will happen for people who arrive in Venice on the day of their cruise and don't stay overnight at a hotel.

 

DON

[euro cruiser]

This was agreed to in 2019 and originally was expected to only impact cruise passengers, because it would be easier to charge a "captive" audience.  Covid prevented anything from happening at that time, and now banning cruise ships from the canal takes out the easy targets.

 

Now they are talking about turnstiles to enter the city so we'll see what happens.  Apparently in the first couple of months since tourism restarted people have been behaving badly (at least according to an article in La Repubblica), jumping off bridges into the Grand Canal, paying no mind to Covid distancing guidelines, etc.  

 

The article is interesting, it says that local officials were kicked into action by this behavior, and notes that they had all of the Covid shut down time to come up with a plan but didn't, then seemingly slapped something together this summer in reaction to what's going on.

 

Venezia, dall'estate 2022 tornelli e tassa d'ingresso. L'overtourism fa già paura - la Repubblica