Dozens of associations take stock after twenty days of experimentation. “Tutta la città insieme” reels off the data obtained with access to the documents: “The flows of tourists are not decreasing”
By Leonardo Bison
June 15, 2024
The opposition to the “entry fee” to Venice met today at the Rialto fish market. Or at least the loudest part of that front, the one that organized the well-attended demonstration on April 25th, the day of the ticket’s debut: the opposition council list “Tutta la città insieme”, together with Asc-Assemblea sociale per la casa, Ambiente Bene Comune, and dozens of other citizen associations and committees.
At 6pm a few hundred citizens populated the Pescheria, a place which has now hosted several “no ticket” assemblies of residents in Venice. At the center, as always, was the theme of housing and tourist rentals – the ticket clarified once again how the presence of tourists is three times higher than that of those who live in the city every day – but also the issues of privacy and the alleged unconstitutionality of the access fee, which obliges anyone visiting the city to register on the designated portal. On this point, the privacy guarantor opened an investigation in 2022, which to date has not yet been concluded.
“We need to change the question, change the paradigm: not what we can do to stop tourism, but what we can do for the residents, to improve the city” said Federica Toninello of Asc. The recurring theme of the speeches was focused not so much on the ticket, which for those present is an experiment that has already demonstrated that it is a failure, but on ideas for a different city, from the lack of services to too many tourist beds.
Giovanni Andrea Martini, municipal councilor of “Tutta la città insieme”, presented the data obtained through access to documents and communicated to the press yesterday: “Substantially in the historic city the presence of visitors is three times that of residents. This, logically, alters and has altered everything from everyday life to healthcare services, from transportation to work.” The data obtained from the “Smart Control Room” – through cameras and cell phone tracking – show 65-66 thousand presences in the city, excluding residents, on weekends without tickets. Meanwhile, on weekends with “tickets”, between registered paying and exempt visitors, the numbers are much higher (around 80 thousand). It is difficult to think that this reflects an actual increase in visitors on the days when the ticket is in effect, rather than an incomparability of the two data points. In any case, for now, the effectiveness of the ticket as a disincentive does not appear to emerge from the available data.
Today’s numbers
Today, the twentieth day of the ticket, the trend which sees Saturdays being busier than Sundays is confirmed. There were 14,698 paying daily tourists (remember that visitors to Venice who do not sleep in facilities in the municipality of Venice, are not residents of Veneto and have no friends or relatives in the city must pay), an increase compared to last Saturday. 41,500 exempt people registered as guests in Venetian accommodation facilities; 6,191 exempt Venetians were registered. The categories that mostly requested the exemption until 14 June were stable: students (17,065), workers (22,833), owners of properties or renters not resident in Venice (7,840) and relatives of residents (2,746). The number of those exempt as friends of residents increased to 4,712. Those exempt for “other reasons” are 1,772.
Tomorrow will be the twenty-first day of the access fee, again from 8.30am to 4pm. There have still not been any serious problems in checking visitors.
Source: Venezia Today
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