Venice wants to continue charging admission for day trippers. This weekend, the trial period for this price, the first in the world, ends.
The city wants to take demand into account with the new rates, doubling the fare from €5 ($5.40) to €10 when the city on Italy’s Adriatic coast is particularly busy, Michele Zuin, the city councillor in charge of finance, told a local newspaper.
The nearly month-long lawsuit earned the city more than €2 million ($2.1 million), with some days seeing more than 25,000 paying guests.
Zuin said in an article in Il Gazzettino that from 2025 a “basic rate” would apply to day visitors, but on “critical days” visitors would have to pay a maximum rate of €10.
The city wants to take the time to make an official report after the last two days of testing, this coming Saturday and Sunday. First, the collected data will be evaluated. During the trial period, an entrance fee of €5 was charged between 8:30 (06:30 GMT) and 16:00. Visitors could obtain a QR code via the internet and download it to their mobile phone to pay.
With an estimated 15 million guests per year, Venice is one of the most visited cities in the world. Mass tourism brings a lot of money to the city’s coffers, but also causes considerable damage.