MILAN — Venice city officials said Friday that the hiker tax raised 2.4 million euros ($2.6 million) during a trial phase this summer, and that decisions on how to proceed would be made in the fall after a full analysis of the data.
According to the city, the 5-euro tax was paid 485,062 times during the 29 days of testing, mostly weekends and holidays, from April 25 to July 14. The final figures included paper access tickets sold to bus tours, cruise ships and some tour operators. , which represents around 1,000 entries on each of the test days.
Italians accounted for 60% of visitors to the ticket website during the period, followed by American, German and French citizens, ranging between 6.5% and 4% of the total.
City officials have indicated that the system, in which hikers pay an entrance fee, would be expanded next year and doubled to 10 euros, at least on some days, but made no immediate announcement.
Mayor Luigi Brugnaro He said the city would consider adjusting the fee based on whether the tax is paid in advance or at the last minute. He defended the tourist tax critics, who described it as a failure for allegedly not deterring arrivals, as planned.
“We listened to citizens, associations, thousands of people, but in the end there were no alternative solutions to ours,” said Brugnaro. “We thought about taking this route of controls, which were light enough, non-invasive.”
Visitors not staying in accommodation in the city were required to download a QR code proving they had paid the tax; Officials said the average transaction duration was 2 minutes. Hotel guests, who pay an accommodation tax, were exempt, as were people living in the Veneto region, visitors under 14 years old and those visiting relatives, among others.
Venice has long grappled with overtourism, with estimates of between 25 and 30 million annual arrivals of both day-trippers and overnight guests roughly confirmed by cellphone data tracked from a Smart Control Room since 2020, according to Venice officials. the city.
The hiker tax, delayed by the pandemic, was announced by UNESCO member states when they decided not to accept a recommendation to include the city on their list of world heritage sites in danger. The city had escaped listing two years earlier when it imposed a cruise ban through the Giudecca canal and through the San Marco basin.
The city’s top tourism official, Simone Venturini, said the admission price marked “a cultural revolution.”
“For the first time in the world, a city has an instrument that finally allows it to have clear data, and not just rough estimates, not longer interpretations of the data, but exact data” of the people who enter and leave the city.” , he claimed. .
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This story has been corrected to show that Italians accounted for 60% of visitors to the ticket website, not 60% of visitors to Venice.
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