After a difficult two years, starting with the acqua alta floods in late 2019, and the more recent coronavirus pandemic, tourism is returning to Venice, and the “City of Canals” wants to make tourism sustainable, and avoid overcrowding.
It has been a month since cruise ships were banned from the lagoon, in defense of its ecosystem and heritage, after the United Nations cultural organization UNESCO threatened to put the country on a blacklist for not banning liners from the World Heritage site.
This year, with Venice celebrating the 1,600th anniversary of its founding in AD421, the influx of visitors could easily exceed the 20 to 30 million tourists the city hosts annually.
Marco Ober, CC SA 4.0.
Pre-bookings and turnstiles
In order to have some control over the crowds that visit the city, and hopefully get “day-trippers” to stay longer and really enjoy the sights the city has to offer, Venice’s leaders believe that they have come up with a solution, according to Traveller.com.
They plan to build airport-style turnstiles that will enable the authorities, for the first time ever, to close the city to visitors when the numbers become overwhelming.
While this effort may be seen as crossing a line, setting a cap on the number of tourists allowed into the city has long been discussed but never adopted.
“To come to Venice, you are going to have to make a booking,” said Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor, speaking in a newly-restored park on the banks of the Grand Canal.
Only tourists with a special app and a QR code will be able to pass through the turnstiles. Day-trippers will be charged between 3 and 10 euros to enter, depending on the time of the year.
And according to CTV News Canada, 468 CCTV cameras, optical sensors, and a mobile phone-tracing system are also being used. This will allow authorities to tell residents from visitors, Italians from foreigners, where people are coming from, where they are heading and how fast they are moving.
“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,” Mayor Brugnaro told foreign reporters on Sunday.
The new rules are expected to come into force between next summer and 2023. However, some potential visitors are skeptical, assuming the whole thing is a scheme to make money.
Too many visitors at a time are smothering the ancient city
For a city that generally can see 60,000 visitors a day, residents were astonished when 193,000 people squeezed into the historic center in a single day during the 2019 Carnival. On August 4 this year, the city counted 148,000 visitors.
“There is a physical limitation on the number of people that can be in the city at the same time,” said Marco Bettini, director-general of Venis, the IT company that built the monitoring system in partnership with phone operator TIM.
“We don’t want to leave anyone behind or stop people from coming to Venice. We want people to book in advance, tell us where they want to go, what they want to visit, in order to provide a better quality of service.”
Stefano Verratti who sells Murano glass near the train station backed the idea. “I have been here for 30 years, and it used to be very different. Before Venice was really romantic,” the 50-year-old vendor told reporters.
“Now it’s just people rushing to buy a kebab, take a quick selfie on the Rialto bridge, and then rushing to take a train. I don’t know if they really enjoy it.”
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