Last weekend, new rules came into effect in Venice, Italy. Under the new rules, the size of tour groups is limited to 25 people and loudspeakers have also been banned.
According to officials of the Italian city, the new measures are aimed at limiting the impact of over-tourism at the world-renowned destination.
Numbers show that a total of 25 million people visit Venice every year.
The measures
The announcement of the measures had first been made back in January 2024 for improving tourism in the lagoon city.
They are designed to strike a better balance between the needs of the tourists and residents of the city. Tens of millions of visitors come to the canals of the historic quarter of Venice.
Therefore, it is considered one of Europe’s most visited sites. This is not the first set of measures that the city has taken for curbing the impact of tourists.
This year in April, it had also introduced a daily entry fee of €5. Back in 2021, officials had also imposed a ban on cruise ships from docking there.
Venice authorities revealed that since they had imposed the entrance fee of €5 for day trippers, they had managed to collect about one million euros in the first 11 days alone.
The fee
Between April 25th and May 5th, a total of 195,000 tickets had been sold, which were higher than expectations. They were able to bring in €975,000.
But, this figure is still less than three million that were spent to set up the ticket controls, information campaigns and online reservation systems.
According to authorities, once the trial period is over, the fee will be increased to €10. Those who do not get a ticket to visit the country, a fine will be imposed. This will be between €50 and €300.
Day visitors currently need to pay an entrance fee of €5, with the exception of children and students under 14 and residents of the Veneto region.
There were 70,000 entries on May 19th, 2024, while 65,000 entries had been registered last year on June 2nd, a national holiday in the country.
Visitor numbers
The city has made a considerable amount of efforts to prevent over-tourism. There are about 25,000 people currently residing in Venice. In 2019, the city welcomed more than 13 million visitors.
Since then, there has been a decline in visitor numbers to the city. However, they are expected to increase in the coming years and surpass levels recorded before the pandemic.
Furthermore, last year, about two square miles of the historic quarter in Venice had received 20 million visitors.
The area has full-time residents of about 50,000 and total number of tourist beds available for rent stand at 49,000.
