How can Venice deal with growing mass tourism?

DW (English)

Venice is seen as one of most romantic cities on Earth – making it a major tourist destination. But how do Venetians deal with the madding tourist crowds?

Transcript

00:00Walking around in Venice can be a challenge, and no wonder.

00:04The city gets around 30 million tourists every year.

00:08No space, long lines.

00:12As a result, fewer and fewer locals live in the historic center of the city, which is

00:16packed with travelers.

00:18Venice is trying to improve the situation with some creative ideas, but is the city

00:23doing enough?

00:24As a Venetian citizen, in my opinion, the city is becoming a little too crowded.

00:29The tourism here is mass tourism, that's grab and go.

00:36It's no longer the nice kind of tourism that existed before.

00:39I'm mortified, because it's no longer my Venice.

00:44It's Venice with just a few Venetians.

00:47In Venice, we have no space, we are in trouble, but also the tourists are in trouble.

00:55Venice is one of the most visited cities in Italy, thanks to its magnificent architecture,

00:59centuries of history, and of course, its many canals.

01:03But over-tourism is an everyday problem.

01:06The city has come up with some ideas to tackle the influx of travelers.

01:14Venetian tour guide Giuseppina Giudice explains to us what's in store.

01:18In Venice, in the last years, there's been a lot of new restrictions.

01:22This year, they will start again this experiment that started last year to pay people to enter

01:30physically in town.

01:31It's done more for people who come for the day, hoping to reduce the amount of daily visitors.

01:38Tourists visiting for the day must now pay an entrance fee that can reach 10 euros on certain

01:43high-season days, but it's unclear if the sun will really stop people from visiting Venice.

01:48In 2024, the city also introduced size limits on tour groups.

01:55The tour guides have to be together with other 24 people, so together with the guide you have

02:03to be in 25.

02:06For this, we could be with many, many more people, up to 50, I've seen huge groups.

02:12This will affect a bit some agencies, because of course, if you have 50 people now, you need

02:17two guides.

02:19And those are not the only tourism-related restrictions.

02:23In 2021, Venice banned large cruise ships from docking in the lagoon.

02:30But do such restrictions actually stop tourists from visiting?

02:34They say not, but opinions vary.

02:39As a tourist, I believe the environmental is very important.

02:47So if you can cover that with a fee, that's a good idea.

02:50I'm okay.

02:51I'm not coming every day.

02:52An extra fee is probably a very good thing, and hopefully it can be used towards conservation

02:58and protecting heritage and architecture.

03:00I think it's convenient to pay, but not that much.

03:04More tourists mean more income for the city.

03:07To bring awareness to the problem of over-tourism, Venetians are taking to the streets to protest

03:12and are proposing their own solutions.

03:16Jane D'Amosto from the organization We Are Here Venice thinks the entrance fee is not the

03:21way to go.

03:22The entry ticket is symptomatic of thinking of Venice purely as a tourist destination and

03:35how to get money from tourists.

03:39What Venice needs is an approach to looking after the city centered on the well-being of

03:47its residents.

03:48The issue for Venice isn't mass tourism.

03:53The issue for Venice is the dying resident population.

04:00Activists from venetia.com put a monitor in the city center that displays the current number

04:04of residents in Venice.

04:06The figure has dropped in recent decades from 100,000 to less than 50,000 people.

04:14Matteo Secchi, an activist from venetia.com and creator of the Monitor Counting Venice Residents,

04:20has spent years calling for an end to mass tourism.

04:23Our solution is to stop the entrance of Venice in the busiest days.

04:33In Venice there's too many people.

04:36I'm sorry, we like the tourists, we like the visitors, but some days you can't survive,

04:42so you can stop the entrance.

04:45Discussions about how Venice can preserve its identity while staying open to the world continue.

04:52What do you think about the restrictions on tourism taking place?

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