The trial period for the controversial new entry fee for Venice Italy, is complete for 2024.
For 29 days between April and July (mostly weekends and holidays), the city mandated a charge of €5 (US$5.45) per person to enter Venice.
Over that period of two and a half months, some 450,000 tourists paid the entry tax. Although city officials will not release financial results until September or October, the Associated Press calculates that the charge for day-trippers brought the city revenue of €2.2 million ($2.4 million).
The program’s FAQ claimed the funds would be used, vaguely, for “tourism-related interventions, including for the maintenance, enjoyment and recovery of local cultural and environmental assets and related local public services.”
Despite publicity that promised stiff fines for any visitor who attempted to dodge the entry fee, no fines were collected from visitors who did. Critics of the program alleged that once tourists realized there would be no penalty for ignoring the fee, they could simply enter Venice without consequences.
So far, evidence has not been presented to prove the entry fee helped limit crowds at all. Over the first 11 days of the tax, an average of 75,000 visitors were recorded in Venice. Critics pointed out that was 10,000 more tourists than on similar days in 2023.
Nevertheless, city officials have announced that the 2024 trial period was a success, and they’re gunning to expand the tourist fee next year.
“In this first phase of experimentation, major disincentive effects were not there, it’s true, but we didn’t expect them either,” Michele Zuin, Venice’s budget councilor, told Il Gazzettino.
Zuin added that in 2025, the city intends to double the Venice entry fee to €10 ($10.90).
As reported by The Local, signs at a recent protest complained that the entry ticket “does not improve the life of Venetians” and that “tourists and residents are increasingly controlled.”
Venice’s government will vote on the fate of the entry tax for 2025 later this year.