Venice Takes Its Toll.📌

Vamometer: EU—There’s a new, more welcoming price to be paid for popularity. Just ask Venice, Italy:

Flipping the Skiff.

(12/15/23)—Little wonder Venice is poised to impose a visitor entrance fee beginning in 2024, tripping up day trippers for the privilege of soaking in Italy’s world-renowned heritage city—ostensibly a bid to throttle rampant tourism.

The latest case in point: a boatload of sightseers suddenly stood tall to take wraparound selfies, causing their gondola to flip over as it was preparing to maneuver under a low bridge. A handful of Chinese tourists were tossed into the canal, taking blankets and upholstered chairs with them. After swimming to safety, they cited a language barrier between them and the gondolier’s instructions.

This overboarding mishap was but one of many plaguing Venice’s 430 licensed gondoliers, who paddle in shifts to ferry tourists about the islands city, five per gondola (each visitor weighing 230 lbs. max) all year round. But apparently, spilled water runs deep, as does the gondoliers’ resentment, let alone the exasperation of Venezia’s civic authorities.

(6/6/21—Wading Backdrop). The world heritage site had been on its knees under the worst flooding since 1966. Composed of 100 islands in an Adriatic Sea lagoon, Venice has been slowing sinking for ages, but had been disastrously swamped under some six feet of floodwaters.

A powerful, meridional jet stream storm surge had inundated museums, galleries, St. Mark’s Basilica and Square. Climate change or no, the renowned ‘floating city’ had arguably been ill-prepared for such emergency water-level rise. Because its proposed $6b MOSE flood barrier system has been mired in delays, cost overruns and alleged corruption, to where the entire project may already be outdated.

But then Coronavirus closed in, all of Venice, and Italy locked down; the city was virtually deserted. Venice since having banned cruise ships from its historic center, local enviro activists are already protesting the first post-COVID cruise vessel to poke in its monster bow. All told, the city’s T/T sector has been taking on more water and red ink by the rust buckets.

(10/20/21)—Now, however, Venice is steadily reopening to visitors, albeit at about 60% of 2019 levels, with some 30% of foreign tourists over the summer ’21 months, yet 50% more Italians; hotels operating at upwards of 40% capacity. Perhaps because pandemic rules still hold beaucoup water, masks, vaccinations and current negative COVID tests are in order, with five-day quarantines for those unjabbed and recently untested. VAX, test and post-COVID ‘green cards’ are required for entry to indoor spaces such as bar/restaurants, museums, churches and other venues. Nevertheless paperwork aside, Venice’s treats and treasures abound by the gondola load, with more elbow and breathing room these days than you might think—minus a number of the undue tolls.  (MTC…)

Before the Flood.

Even prior to that acqua alta, Venice was sinking in an endless swarm of tourists come hell and higher water, drowning in a sea of mega luxury liners, locals decry the death of Venice’s unique character—gondola by gondola, cruise by cruise. They grouse that everything from lodging to bakeries now caters to day trippers more than long-time denizens, who are jumping ship from the city proper more by the day. 

So city authorities have gained Rome’s approval to establish an entry fee of nearly $12 USD (€10) per ‘short-visit tourist’. This is to be tacked onto a city tax long levied on hotel guests—which itself brings in some €30m annually. The new ‘landing tax’ is projected to generate €50m more, from tourists who clog the city’s fabled canals as if Venice were just another theme park (residents, students and workers exempted).

Nicked To Death In Venice.

Particularly targeted are the hundreds of overgrown cruise ships that deliver millions of lemming cruisaders to Piazza San Marco and Ponte di Rialto. Now the cruise industry’s counter-argument is hardly helped by the stricken 900-foot-long MSC Opera’s recent ramming into a much smaller tourist boat docked at the San Basilio Terminal in the narrow Giudecca Canal. Local authorities decried this latest cruise behemoth shoehorning into Venice’s fragile lagoon, just past popular St. Mark’s Square.

They further claimed that the landing tax will be aimed at tourists generally, vowing to maintain a proper balance between their beloved city and vital tourism—but admit that nipping quick trippers coming via air, rail and motorway will be a bit more problematic.

Nevertheless, Venice’s landing tax will begin at the onset of 2019’s tourist (high) season, initially set somewhere between $2.50 and $5.00 per, dynamic pricing up to $10 during peak periods. All to better fund the maintenance and cleaning of this treasured city, where waves of mass tourism continue to overrun and roust resident citizens, who say Venice’s unique charm and nature are washing away. Alas, it ultimately comes down to tourism money versus civic moralizing, now doesn’t it.

More Trouble Brewing.

Now Venice has vented its tourist angst by fining two young German backpackers €950 ($1,000). The violation: Having the nerve to make some coffee in a porta-cooker on the steps of the Rialto Bridge—the oldest of four over the city’s Grand Canal. Among other Venetian blindspots: no shirt shedding in public nor improperly ‘impolite’ picnic sites. While polizia ticket visitors sunning on the Spanish Steps of Rome.

So destination dispersion anew: Yet another reason for Vamigrés to look, venture and/or schedule Vamably elsewhere—lest Venice take its toll on us.