Venice is considering a 50-euro entry fee, but the mayor’s proposal has divided opinion

Venice’s mayor, Simone Venturini, has sparked debate with his proposal to increase the entry fee for the city to as much as 50 euros. Currently, the entry fee for visitors ranges from 5 to 10 euros and is in force from April to the end of July. The mayor’s proposal – which he had already outlined during the last election campaign and which he is currently working to formalise – is to increase the fee to between 30 and 50 euros on specific dates and depending on the number of bookings, with exemptions – in addition to residents and workers – also granted to tourists who choose to stay overnight in the lagoon.

Last year’s takings amounted to around 5.4 million over 54 days, with over 720,000 vouchers issued to paying day visitors over a four-month period. In 2024, the first year of the trial and with almost half the number of operating days, there were 485,000 paying visitors.

The opposition is not in favour of the proposal. According to Nicola Pellicani, a city councillor and former PD MP, ‘the entry fee has so far solved nothing: it does not help manage visitor numbers, it does not improve the quality of life, and it has not even served to raise funds, because the administrative costs are equal to the revenue’. He emphasises that ‘the entry fee was set by law in 2021, bringing it into line with the maximum tourist tax, which is 10 euros. To increase it to 50 euros,’ he explains, ‘another law would be needed. I’d like to see who in Parliament would be willing to pass it’.

Luana Zanella, the Avs group leader in the Chamber of Deputies, points out that Venturini’s proposal ‘reveals the right’s view of Venice. A place to do business, to cater for the wealthiest tourists, a space to be offered to major brands. It is deeply saddening to see a policy that focuses on speculation rather than on those who live in and breathe life into Venice, where the policies tried out by the government and the local administration have proved completely ineffective in managing visitor flows and regulating sky-high rents’.

Venetian hoteliers, on the other hand, are ‘fully in agreement’ with the increase in the visitor’s tax. ‘A sliding-scale fee, with a cap of up to 30 or 50 euros, could be a useful tool to encourage those choosing to visit Venice to think twice,’ says the director of the Venetian Hoteliers’ Association, Daniele Minotto, “and possibly encouraging them to choose less crowded periods, such as those between November and February, when the city is perfectly accessible. We also believe it is only right that those who use the city should contribute to its upkeep, cleanliness and the maintenance of high-quality services.”