Tourism is killing Venice and the city is fighting back

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Tourism is killing Venice. And the city is fighting back with the plan to curtail the most pesky and least profitable segment of the visitors hordes – “day-trippers”.

The city of Venice announced that it will charge daily visitors a tourist fee of up to โ‚ฌ10 ($11.35) per person.

More than 24 million visitors come to Venice every year, with about 15 million of them visiting the city just on a day trip.

Venice residents have long grumbled that day-trippers and cruise ship passengers enjoy all that the World Heritage city has to offer without making much (if any at all) of an economic contribution to the city coffers. Some visitors bring their own food with them, thus not spending any money even in the Venetian cafes and restaurants.

New “day-tripper fee” will range between โ‚ฌ2.50 ($2.84) during the low season and โ‚ฌ10 ($11.35) during the high season per visitor and most likely will be incorporated in the cost of visitors’ bus, train or cruise ship fare.

Venice city council has debated for years whether to establish a ticketing scheme with limited number of daily tickets, thus curtailing the number of people, who are allowed to visit each day.

The tourist tax will replace an existing hotel tax, which brought in โ‚ฌ34 million in 2018. The hotel tax is levied on overnight visitors in the city, but excludes day-trippers and cruise ship passengers.

It is hoped that new visitor tax is a step in right direction and will reduce the number of day-trippers to the city.

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Chief Assignment Editor

Chief Assignment editor is Oleg Siziakov

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