Venice will expand its entry fee system in 2025, almost doubling the number of days visitors have to pay to see the city and raising the price for last-minute arrivals, officials said on Thursday, the 24th of October, adding that the system was “successfully” tested last year, reports Reuters and the BBC.
In a world first, Venice last April introduced a five-euro charge for entry on days when tourists arrive in particularly large numbers, in the hope that the fee would help ease crowds.
The programme initially covered 29 days over a four-month period from April to July.
Next year, the charge will apply from Friday to Sunday and on public holidays during the same period from the 18th of April to the 27th of July 2025, for a total of 54 days.
The fee for a pre-booking visit will remain at five euros, while the fee for a booking made four days before the scheduled departure will be increased to ten euros. As before, people booking hotels or guesthouses in the city will be exempt from the fee.
All visitors over 14 years of age will have to pay the fee by phone and download a QR code to show to the inspectors who will randomly check people at arrival points such as the train station.
“Venice has gone from being the city most affected by the phenomenon of overtourism to being the city with the earliest and most proactive global response to the phenomenon,” said Simone Venturini, the city councillor responsible for tourism.
He told a press conference that the system was still in an experimental phase, adding that tourist hotspots including the Japanese historic city of Kyoto and the Spanish island of Formentera had been in touch to find out more about the system.
Critics pointed out that the payment system had failed to reduce tourist traffic, but the city’s mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, said it was too early to say as accurate figures would not be available until later this year.
“We are not against it (tourism). We just think it can be somehow balanced out,” he said, warning that in 2025 the city would issue fines to people without a pass, as it had threatened to do in 2024.
A total of 485 062 people paid for a day pass this year, generating 2.25 million euros. According to Brugnaro, this only covered part of the system’s costs and was not aimed at collecting money.
According to Italian media, the cost of the booking platform and the communication campaign was around three million euro.
Giovanni Andrea Martini, an opposition member of the Venice Council, said in July that the charging system had “failed” because it had not helped to spread out the flow of tourists visiting Venice.
At the time, Martini also said that a possible increase in the fee from five to ten euros would be “pointless” and would only “turn Venice into a museum”.
Last year, UNESCO announced that Venice should be added to the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger because the effects of climate change and mass tourism threaten to cause irreversible changes.