Venice is preparing to charge tourists, a reservation is required

VENICE, September 6 (Reuters) – From a control room at the Venice police headquarters, Big Brother is watching you.

To combat the tourist overcrowding, officials are tracking all people who step on the lagoon city.

Using 468 CCTV cameras, optical sensors and a mobile phone tracking system, they can tell visiting residents, Italians of foreigners, where people are coming from, where they are heading and how fast they are moving. .

Every 15 minutes, authorities get a snapshot of how crowded the city is, along with how many gondolas glide over the Grand Canal, if the boats are going at full speed and if the waters are reaching dangerous levels.

Now, a month after the ban on cruises to the lagoon, city authorities are preparing to require tourists to book their visit in advance in an app and charge hikers between 3 and 10 euros to enter, depending on the time of the year.

Similar turnstiles are being tested at the airport to control the flow of people and, in case the figures are overwhelming, they prevent new visitors from entering.

The mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, says his goal is to make tourism more sustainable in a city visited by 25 million people a year. But he acknowledges that the new rules are likely to be difficult to sell.

“I expect protests, lawsuits, everything … but I have a duty to make this city livable for those who live in it and also for those who want to visit,” he told foreign journalists on Sunday.

Potential visitors are skeptical.

“It gives me the wrong tone when I feel like I have to pay the entrance just to see the buildings on the city streets because who decides who can enter?” Said Marc Schieber, German national in Venice for the current film festival.

“I think it’s probably a new way to make money.”

Brugnaro said authorities had yet to decide how many people were too many and when the new rules would begin, although they were expected to take effect between next summer and 2023.

The scheme, first proposed in 2019, was postponed due to COVID-19. During the closing of last year, the Venetians marveled at the narrow streets of their city for once without crowds of tourists, the waters of the lagoon were immaculate by the absence of motorboats.

But when visitors repacked St. Mark’s Square this summer, officials say Venice cannot afford, for its own survival, to let the figures go unchecked.

“ATTACHED CONDITIONS”

Some 193,000 people entered the historic center in a single day during Carnival 2019, before the pandemic hit. As of August 4 this year, the city had 148,000, with the difference being explained by the fact that many American and Asian travelers have not yet returned to Europe.

“There is a physical limitation on the number of people who can be in the city at the same time,” said Marco Bettini, CEO of Venis, the IT company that built the surveillance system in collaboration with the ‘TIM telephone operator.

“We don’t want to leave anyone behind or prevent people from coming to Venice. We want people to make a reservation in advance, tell us where they want to go, what they want to visit, in order to provide a better quality of service.”

Residents, students and travelers will be exempt from the tourist tax. So will those who spend at least one night in a hotel in Venice, as they will have already paid the nightly rate of up to 5 euros a day charged by the city.

Brugnaro dismissed privacy concerns, saying the data collected was anonymous. But his message was clear: by controlling the number of tourists coming to Venice, he also wants travelers to behave.

“There will be conditions for getting reservations and priority discounts,” he said. “You can’t come in a bathing suit. You can’t jump off a bridge or get drunk. Whoever comes must respect the city.”

In Venice, where the number of residents in the center has dropped to just 55,000, from about 175,000 in the 1950s, the Brugnaro plan is the subject of heated debate, with some concerns that will deter tourists with less heels and will turn the city into an amusement park.

Others, such as 50-year-old Stefano Verratti, who sells Murano glass near the train station, supported the idea of ​​discouraging hikers.

“I’ve been here for 30 years and before it was very different. Before Venice was really romantic,” he said. “Now it’s just people rushing to buy a kebab, taking a quick selfie on the Rialto Bridge and rushing to catch a train. I don’t know if they really like it.”

Report by Silvia Aloisi and Alex Fraser; Additional reports by Cristiano Corvino; Edited by Alex Richardson

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