By the summer of 2022, the city of Venice will implement a booking obligation rule for tourists who want to visit Venice. Then after the reservation trial, from 2023, a “pay to visit” law will go into effect whereby day-trippers will have to pay between 3-10 euros to visit Venice.
After the booming success of tourists that invaded Venice on the occasion of the Easter holiday which saw a flow of 110,000 people on Friday, 160,000 on Saturday, 140,000 on Easter day, and almost 100,000 on Monday, with fully booked hotels and queues for water buses, museums, and St. Mark’s Basilica, the city municipality is resuming talks about the management of tourism in the lagoon.
The goal is to know in advance how many people will be present in the historic center.
The Mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, accelerated the booking, foreseeing it already from the summer of 2022. “Today, many have understood that the bookability of the city is the right path to take for a more balanced management of tourism. We will be the first in the world in this difficult experimentation,” the Mayor said.
At present, the city is working to develop the booking platform. Those arriving in Venice will have to book on the special website that will be presented shortly, excluding residents of the metropolitan city. This city entry ticket system was postponed given the 2 years of the pandemic and crisis suffered by tour operators.
For the Tourism Councilor, Simone Venturini, it is “a revolution – today it happens for museums but no cities apply to the system. We will start [on] an experimental basis. We are aware that adjustments and additions will be necessary, but this is the only possible way -an innovation looked at positively also by some members in the city council who contested the Mayor’s idea.
“The success of the innovation is attributed to Luigi Brugnaro’s long debates at the Rome Parliament in order to obtain the necessary tools to manage the future tourist flows.”
