Many travelers are accustomed to nightly tourism taxes tacked on to their hotel bills.
But daytime taxes are a recent ask.
Venice’s city council on Tuesday approved a long-awaited regulation to tax day visitors 5 euros ($5.38) to go to the town.
The brand new tax might be implemented over 30 non-consecutive days in 2024, falling on long weekends within the spring and regular weekends in the summertime, based on an announcement published Tuesday on the town’s website.
Exact dates might be announced in the approaching weeks, it said.
Who has to pay the fee
Typically, the fee will apply to all day tourists over the age of 14.
Overnight travelers are exempt, though they’re subject to a separate tourist tax implemented in 2011. This tax varies by travel season, accommodation type and placement, based on the town’s website — and is frequently between 1 and 5 euros per person per night, for the primary five nights of a stay.
Why is Venice taxing day visitors?
The brand new tax is an try to “protect the town from mass tourism,” Luigi Brugnaro, Venice’s mayor, posted on X, formerly often known as Twitter.
“We are going to perform an experiment with great humility and can try to not harm anyone,” he said, based on a translation of the post.
Venice has toyed with the concept of taxing day visitors for years, as considered one of several measures to curb overtourism in the town — which locals have long blamed for driving up prices and reworking the town right into a souvenir-laden theme park of sorts.
Residents, specifically the estimated 50,000 who live in the town’s historic area, are far outnumbered by the some 5.5 million who visited the town in 2019 — lots of whom disembark from cruise ships by the 1000’s to take photographs of Venice’s famous canals and city squares.
So-called “hit and run” tourists represent nearly three out of each 4 visitors to Venice, yet they contribute lower than 20% to its tourism economy, based on the Belgium-based news network Euronews.
Will it work?
In keeping with research, taxes and fines alone will not be sufficient to tackle overtourism, said Tatyana Tsukanova, a research associate at EHL Hospitality Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The town of Venice currently fines visitors who eat or drink on the bottom, sit on monuments and bridges, or swim in its canals, based on the town’s website.
Tsukanova cited Bhutan, which reopened in 2022 with a $200 every day tourist fee imposed to draw “high value, low volume” tourists. Earlier this summer, the country halved the fee to spur more travelers to go to.
Crowds by the Grand Canal through the Carnival of Venice on Feb. 11, 2023.
Miguel Medina | Afp | Getty Images
While Bhutan’s tax can have worked a little bit too well, Venice’s tax is probably not enough to disincentivize travelers who’ve come from afar to see the traditional city.
Kumar Vinnakota, a lawyer in Dallas, Texas, said he would not think twice about paying 5 euros to go to Venice.
“Most cities world wide have tourist taxes or hotel taxes paid by tourists anyway,” he said.
