A day trip to the city of canals is just a little more expensive this summer. Starting this week, Venice is charging tourists visiting for a day.
The fee is part of a pilot program the city launched in an effort to control the amount of visitors to the tourism mecca, as officials recognize they "need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents," Simone Venturini, top tourism official said, according to the Associated Press.
"We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days," Venturini said.
The fee is focused on people just visiting for a day, not those staying overnight, and it comes in the wake of several other efforts the city is taking to try to limit the amount of tourists.
What to know about Venice's day-trip fee
The Venice access fee is 5 euros, or about $5.35. It can be paid online ahead of time, and there are also QR codes posted at entry points to Venice for those arriving without having paid.
The pilot program, when visitors have to pay to enter, is in effect on the following days:
- April 25-30
- May 1-5
- May 11-12
- May 18-19
- May 25-26
- June 8-9
- June 15-16
- June 22-23
- June 29-30
- July 6-7
- July 13-14
Visitors who arrive after 4 p.m. or before 8:30 a.m. will not be charged the fee. Entrance then will be free. Additionally, the fee won't apply for children under the age of 14.
There are also exemptions for the Venice fee. This includes residents of Veneto, the region Venice is part of, and relatives of Venetian residents, as well as students on school trips.
Other tourism restrictions in Venice
In recent years, Venice has attempted several measures to try to tamp down the number of visitors. An estimated 25 to 30 million people visit the city each year, according to the AP, and this fee will help the city be able to more accurately measure how many of those visitors are only there for the day.
Other efforts the city has attempted include banning large cruise ships from docking and banning large groups of visitors. Venice announced in December it was banning loudspeakers and tourist groups over 25 people, according to the BBC. That is going into effect this June.
This all comes as Venice faces pressure from multiple sides to limit tourism, which physically damages the floating city, pushes residents out, and, if I may, makes visiting rather miserable, no matter how beautiful it looks.
UNESCO, the United Nations agency that looks at historically and culturally significant places, has noted that "exceptionally high tourism pressure" in Venice has functionally transformed it, including "by the replacement of residents' houses with accommodation and commercial activities and services to the residence with tourism-related activities that endanger the identity and the cultural and social integrity" of the area.
If your heart's set on Venice, make sure you have what you need to travel to Europe, and there are plenty of great travel websites to help plan your trip. Although, I might suggest, why not try Bari, in south Italy, or Dubrovnik, in Croatia, instead? You'll save at least $5 — and plenty of headaches over crowds.
