Venice makes £2million from day-tripper tax with trial scheme tipped for extension

Venice city officials say they have made £2million ( 2.4million euros) charging day tourists to enter the city under a trial scheme.

The day-tripper tax of five euros per person was pitched as a way to limit the numbers of tourists in the city.

The hope was that the environmental impact on the northern Italian city could be lessened.

Official figures showed the tax was paid 485,062 times over the 29 test days, mostly weekends and holidays, from April 25 to July 14.

The final numbers included paper access tickets sold to bus tours, cruise ships and some tour operators, accounting for around 1,000 entrances on each of the test days.

Italians accounted for 60 per cent of visitors to Venice in the period, followed by US, German and French citizens, ranging from 6.5% to 4% of the totals.

City officials have indicated that the system, where day-trippers pay an entrance fee, would be extended next year, and doubled to 10 euros on some days.

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said that the city would consider adjusting the fee based on if the tax is paid in advance, or at the last minute.

He defended the tourist tax from critics, who called it a failure for allegedly not deterring arrivals, as envisioned.

"We listened to citizens, to associations, to thousands of people, but in the end, there were no alternative solutions to ours," Mr Brugnaro said.

"We thought to take this road of the controls, which were light enough, not invasive."

Visitors not staying in lodging in the city were required to download a QR code showing they had paid the tax; officials said that the average length of the transaction was two minutes.

Hotel guests, who pay a lodging tax, were exempt, as were people living in the Veneto region, visitors under 14, and those visiting relatives, among others.

Venice estimates of 25 million to 30 million annual arrivals of both day-trippers and overnight guests.

The day-tripper tax, delayed by the pandemic, was heralded by Unesco member states when they decided against a recommendation to place the city on its list of world heritage sites in danger.

Tourist official Simone Venturini, said the entrance fee marked "a cultural revolution".

He added: "For the first time in the world, a city has an instrument that allows to finally have clear data, and not just approximate estimates, not longer interpretations of data, but exact data of people entering and leaving the city," he said.”

But hundreds of Venetians have protested as their city became the first in the world to introduce a payment system for day-trippers.

City chiefs hoped the trial would discourage tourists from arriving during peak periods, and help the popular city find "a new balance" between residents and visitors.

But resident Cristina Romieri said: "We are against this measure because it will do nothing to stop overtourism.”

“It is such a complex regulation with so many exceptions that it will also be difficult to enforce it."

Giovanni Andrea Martini, a member of an opposition group in the Town Hall who joined the residents' protests on Thursday, called it "a sad day because Venice is becoming a museum, a theme park".

Holding banners reading "No to ticket for Vene-Land" and chanting "Here we live and here we stay", a few hundred people peacefully marched through one of Venice's main squares to express their opposition to the new measure.