Is Venice’s Controversial Entry Fee Working?

Venice recently wrapped up its day-tripper fee experiment, which required tourists visiting the Italian city for less than 24 hours to pay €5 (about $5.50). The controversial initiative is part of an effort to curb overtourism, which has led to problems such as overcrowding and pollution in recent years.

Proponents of the fee consider the pilot program a “great success,” as Venice’s mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, tells the New York Times’ Elisabetta Povoledo. However, many critics were not convinced that the fee actually accomplished its goal of protecting the city.

Earlier this month, dozens of activists gathered outside of Venice’s Santa Lucia train station to protest the initiative, reports Colleen Barry of the Associated Press (AP). They argued that it did little to control the throngs of tourists that fill Venice.

“The ticket is a failure, as demonstrated by city data,” Giovanni Andrea Martini, an opposition city council member, tells the AP.

The entrance fee was in effect on 29 “peak” days between late April and mid-July. During those periods, travelers paid the fee 485,000 times, bringing in €2.43 million for the city—which is “much more than we expected,” Brugnaro tells the Times, adding that officials predicted the program would make €700,000.

Meanwhile, critics cite the large profit as proof that the plan failed.

“They brag that they raised a lot of money with this contribution, but that shows the opposite,” Martini tells the Times. “If you made that much, it means you can’t control [tourism].”

He adds that cell phone data, which estimates the number of tourists in the city, suggests that the numbers increased on peak days despite the fee. (At a recent news conference, city officials said they would publish a more comprehensive report on their data in the fall.)

Venice is the first city in the world to charge tourists an entrance fee. It’s the latest—and one of the most controversial—efforts to protect the historic city from an influx of tourism and the effects of climate change. In recent years, as the Times reported in 2023, officials have banned large cruise ships from traversing Venice’s waters, built sea barriers to combat flooding, and started tracking tourists’ movements via cell phone data.

Despite these efforts, overtourism is “out of control,” as Lidia Fersuoch, a Venice native, told the Wall Street Journal’s Eric Sylvers in September. “We’ve become Italy’s answer to Disneyland.” Last year, the growing threats almost landed Venice on UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger.

When the entrance fee was in effect, day-trippers were required to register online and pay using a QR code. Students, workers, residents of the region and overnight tourists were exempt from the tax.

However, it’s unclear how strictly the policy was enforced. There were no turnstiles at the city gateways, according to Reuters’ Alex Fraser and Manuel Silvestri. Instead, inspectors made random checks and issued fines to those who had failed to register.

Franco Migliorini, an architect who researches overtourism, tells the Times that the €5 is too little to “stop anyone” from visiting the city. “Just about everything in Venice costs more than €5, practically even a coffee,” he adds.

Officials are considering doubling the fee next year, reports the AP. However, they will not determine their plans until they finish analyzing the data.

To Giovanni Di Vito, a Venice resident who opposes the tourist tax, the entrance fee is “a great distraction for the media,” as he tells the AP.

Instead, he and fellow critics argue that the city should focus on making Venice an attractive, affordable city for full-time residents, who have been pushed out in recent years as the tourist economy has come to dominate the housing market.

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Ella Malena Feldman is a writer and editor based in Washington, D.C. She examines art, culture and gender in her work, which has appeared in Washington City Paper, DCist and the Austin American-Statesman.