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TOURISM

Dress up and pay up: Venice mayor announces updated plans to control tourism in the city

Booking to enter the city via an app, a tourist tax and turnstiles are all closer to becoming a reality in Venice, as its mayor announced further details about how authorities plan to make tourism in the city more sustainable.

Dress up and pay up: Venice mayor announces updated plans to control tourism in the city
Photo: ANDREA PATTARO/AFP

Venice has long been discussing plans for a so-called ‘tourist tax’ that would help city authorities keep up with the 25 million tourists arriving annually pre-pandemic.

After repeated delays, the city is once again looking to bring in the levy – which is targeted at day-trippers excluded from an existing tax on tourists staying overnight.

Day tourists could pay anywhere between three and 10 euros to enter the historic centre and could be asked to pre-book their visit on an app, according to news reports.

The city’s mayor Luigi Brugnaro acknowledged there’ll be backlash to the proposals, but that they are necessary to ensure Venice’s future, saying “no one should get angry”.

“I expect protests, lawsuits, everything – but I have a duty to make this city liveable for those who inhabit it and also for those who want to visit,” he added in a press conference on Sunday.

Crowds in Venice. Photo: Miguel Medina / AFP

Plans to introduce a booking system, turnstiles and other crowd-control measures to the city were first discussed in 2019 but subsequently put on hold

The plan to charge an entry fee meanwhile was first proposed in 2018 and most recently delayed in November 2020 after severe flooding and the coronavirus pandemic decimated visitor numbers.

Authorities in the city said at the time that the tax would be pushed back until January 1st, 2022.

As travel restrictions ease and tourists return – although not to pre-pandemic levels – the project is back in the spotlight once again and some measures are now being tested out.

In limited trials, airport-style turnstiles are used to control the influx of tourists and will place a limit on those entering if the city gets too full.

READ ALSO: 16 surprising facts about Venice to mark 16 centuries of the lagoon city

Brugnaro hasn’t yet said how many visitors is too many, nor has a new date been given for when the plans will come into force. 

Reports suggest that the proposals could now be implemented between next summer and 2023.

And even then, it’s not as simple as following the procedures of booking and paying tax. If you go to Venice, you need to abide by certain codes of conduct.

“There’ll be conditions attached to obtain priority bookings and discounts,” Brugnaro said.

“You can’t come in your swimsuit. You can’t jump from a bridge or get drunk. Whoever comes must respect the city,” he added.

As for how it will work in reality, the mayor conceded they haven’t developed the technology yet.

“We have to find the tools, technical solutions to allow people to enter the city and leave out those who cannot enter,” he said, adding: “Venice is open to the world and always will be.”

READ ALSO: ‘The myth of Venice’: How the Venetian brand helps the city survive

But the ideas aren’t unanimously backed by Italian authorities. Culture Minister Dario Franceschini reacted to the plans on Tuesday, objecting to the ideas of turnstiles and taxes.

“We must fight the excessive overcrowding of art cities, but without any entry levy,” he said.

“We must exploit less invasive technologies to control the flows,” he added, but on the question of turnstiles he said “an airport comes to mind, not a city”.

Methods to deal with overcrowding, such as tracking how many people are in Venice at any one time are already in action.

CCTV cameras and mobile phone-tracing systems show where people are moving in the city and even who’s a resident and who’s a tourist.

A cruise ship sails past Venice’s city centre. Photo by Miguel Medina / AFP

Other initiatives are also in motion to protect Venice, as authorities moved to ban large cruise ships from sailing into the city centre from August.

For years, campaigners have been calling for an end to ships sailing past St Mark’s Square, arguing that they cause large waves that undermine the city’s foundations and harm the fragile ecosystem of its lagoon.

This is a problem exacerbated by climate change, which – if no action is taken globally to reduce carbon emissions – could see the demise of Venice by the end of the century.

Plans to divert the huge floating hotels away from the historic centre to the industrial port of Marghera instead have been criticised by environmental campaigers and local residents, who question the motives for the plan.

Brugnaro’s role of mayor and his other interests as an entrepreneur have become the subject of parliamentary debate, according to reports this week.

The construction of a new terminal in Marghera for access to the city by water presents “a conflict of interest” that is reaching “worrying levels”, according to senator Orietta Vanin, as Brugnaro owns land in this area.

“The citizens who are questioning the legitimacy of these operations are now aware that choices about the city’s future are not aimed at the common good, protecting the environment and defending the rights of residents,” she added.

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TRAVEL NEWS

Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Almost 800,000 fewer UK holidaymakers have visited Spain in 2023 when compared to 2019. What’s behind this big drop?

Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Spain welcomed 12.2 million UK tourists between January and July 2023, 6 percent less when compared to the same period in 2019, according to data released on Monday by Spanish tourism association Turespaña.

This represents a decrease of 793,260 British holidaymakers for Spain so far this year.

Conversely, the number of Italian (+8 percent), Irish (+15.3 percent), Portuguese (+24.8 percent), Dutch (+4 percent) and French tourists (+5 percent) visiting España in 2023 are all above the rates in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. 

German holidaymakers are together with their British counterparts the two main nationalities showing less interest in coming to Spanish shores.

Britons still represent the biggest tourist group that comes to Spain, but it’s undergoing a slump, with another recent study by Caixabank Research suggesting numbers fell particularly in June 2023 (-12.5 percent of the usual rate). 

READ ALSO: Spain fully booked for summer despite most expensive holiday prices ever

So are some Britons falling out of love with Spain? Are there clear reasons why a holiday on the Spanish coast is on fewer British holiday itineraries?

According to Caixabank Research’s report, the main reasons are “the poor macroeconomic performance of the United Kingdom, the sharp rise in rates and the weakness of the pound”.

This is evidenced in the results of a survey by British market research company Savanta, which found that one in six Britons are not going on a summer holiday this year due to the UK’s cost-of-living crisis.

Practically everything, everywhere has become more expensive, and that includes holidays in Spain: hotel stays are up 44 percent, eating out is 13 percent pricier, and flights are 40 percent more on average. 

READ ALSO: How much more expensive is it to holiday in Spain this summer?

Caixabank stressed that another reason for the drop in British holidaymakers heading to Spain is that those who can afford a holiday abroad are choosing “more competitive markets” such as Turkey, Greece and Portugal. 

And there’s no doubt that the insufferably hot summer that Spain is having, with four heatwaves so far, has also dissuaded many holidaymakers from Blighty from overcooking in the Spanish sun. 

With headlines such as “This area of Spain could become too hot for tourists” or “tourists say it’s too hot to see any sights” featuring in the UK press, budding British holidaymakers are all too aware of the suffocating weather conditions Spain and other Mediterranean countries are enduring. 

Other UK outlets have urged travellers to try out the cooler Spanish north rather than the usual piping hot Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol destinations.

Another UK poll by InsureandGo found that 71 percent of the 2,000+ British respondents thought that parts of Europe such as Spain, Greece and Turkey will be too hot to visit over summer by 2027.

There’s further concern that the introduction in 2024 of the new (and delayed) ETIAS visa for non-EU visitors, which of course now also applies to UK nationals, could further compel British tourists to choose countries to holiday in rather than Spain.

READ MORE: Will British tourists need to pay for a visa waiver to enter Spain?

However, a drop in the number of British holidaymakers may not be all that bad for Spain, even though they did spend over €17 billion on their Spanish vacations in 2022. 

Towns, cities and islands across the country have been grappling with the problem of overtourism and the consequences it has on everything from quality of life for locals to rent prices. 

READ ALSO: ‘Beach closed’ – Fake signs put up in Spain’s Mallorca to dissuade tourists

The overcrowded nature of Spain’s beaches and most beautiful holiday hotspots appears to be one of the reasons why Germans are visiting Spain in far fewer numbers. A recent report in the country’s most read magazine Stern asked “if the dream is over” in their beloved Mallorca.

Spanish authorities are also seeking to overhaul the cheaper holiday package-driven model that dominates many resorts, which includes moving away from the boozy antics of young British and other European revellers.

Fewer tourists who spend more are what Spain is theoretically now looking for, and the rise in American, Japanese and European tourists other than Brits signify less of a dependence on the British market, one which tends to maintain the country’s tourism status quo for better or for worse.

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