Tourism, in Venice the entrance fee beats abuse

In Venice the experimentation goes on: also in 2026 there will be a access fee for 60 non-consecutive days (there were 54 last year), in the time slot 8.30-16 between April and July. A instrument designed to manage tourist flows and to ensure the balance between residents and visitors, an eternal sore point for travellers' favourite destinations. A ranking in which the lagoon city has few rivals: 12.92 million presences in 2025 with a clear prevalence of foreigners (86.6%), numbers slightly decreasing (-2.4%) compared to 2024.

The entrance ticket, the road that Venice has taken first and at least for now alone, brings revenues to the municipal coffers: the flexible tariff system (5 euro for those who book by the fourth last day of their arrival, 10 euro for those who book from the third day before) has guaranteed 762,476 payments with a total revenue of almost 5.5 million euro in 2025. But the system (from which some smaller islands are excluded) has at the same time proved to be an effective tool for combating abuse. In three years there has been a drop in the number of illegal tourist facilities discovered in the lagoon: from 202 identified in 2023 by the Local Police Tax Unit to 63 in 2024, down to just 6 in 2025. A similar trend was recorded on the mainland, where irregularities fell from 71 in 2023 to 13 in 2025.

"This is also thanks to the entry into force of the access contribution, which has forced many facilities to come out of the black economy in order to be able to exempt their guests,' comments the councillor for Employment, Tourism and Social Cohesion, Simone Venturini. 'Added to this is also the close synergy between the municipality and the Guardia di Finanza, with whom we share databases and information on a daily basis. Many of our controls, in fact, are carried out together with the Venice Metropolitan Operations Unit of the Fiamme Gialle'.

2025 was also the first year in which the new national law on short-term rentals came into force, which introduced the compulsory use of Cin, the National Identification Code which every accommodation facility must have and which must be displayed outside the building and indicated in every advertisement published and communicated. Control, verification and application of administrative sanctions are the responsibility of the municipality with fines of up to 5 thousand euro. According to Aigab's calculations, there are 8,904 lodgings intended for short rentals that have requested and obtained the Cin, but only 57% are those actually used for short rentals and 31% permanently online.

In Venice's historic city centre, among the most frequent offences was the failure to display the Cin, with 59 cases ascertained. But there were also two penalties for mismatch of declared beds, three for failure to communicate Scia variations, 16 fines for charging higher rates than those published, and eight for failure to display the distinctive symbol of the assigned class. The computer archives of the Veneto Region, the Venetian municipality and the Bdsr (National database of accommodation facilities and properties intended for short-term rental or for tourism purposes), together with the monitoring of booking portals, led to 532 violations related to the tourist tax.