Protesters are making their voices heard in Venice where the introduction of a new tourist fee is causing a rift.
A €5 tourist tax, or “contribution” as the city Mayor prefers to call it, is at the heart of the issue. Designed as a way to extract funds for the city from the many daytrippers who arrive, often on cruise liners, and overwhelm the historic canals and narrow streets with their numbers, the charge is due to come into force on 25 April 2024.
Over-emphasis on tourism
City officials have held briefings to prepare the public for the advent of the fee and trained stewards out on the streets who will perform random checks to verify whether people have paid it or not. Non-payment could result in fines of up to €300.
The proceeds from the tourist contribution are being set aside for city services, such as street cleaning, maintenance and ways to make the cost of living more affordable. While some welcome the fee as a way to limit tourist numbers or at least ensure that city dwellers benefit from their presence, others say the scheme is ill-conceived and places an undue emphasis on tourism as a key plank in Venice’s economy.
Venice is not a museum
Activists claim the municipality has spent too much implementing the measure and they reject the idea of stewards on the streets checking whether people are residents or not. A large part of the problem Venice faces, they say, is not daytrippers, but a lack of affordable housing, with tourist beds outnumbering residential beds for the first time in 2023.
Venice’s Social Assembly for Housing and the Solidarity Network for Housing formed a protest on 9 April, brandishing banners that called for “Homes, rights, dignity” and declaring that “Venice is not a museum”. The protesters also accessed council buildings demanding to speak with the Mayor and telling press “We don’t need a ticket, but we need the political will to address the problem of housing in Venice.”
A new vision
It is time for a “new vision for the city that does not have tourism at its centre, but has homes and services for citizens,” Federica Toninello from the Social Assembly for Housing told local media. Fellow activitst Susanna Polloni from the Solidarity Network for Housing noted that Venice has “homeless people who work, but they don’t have a home”.
Venice council has ringfenced €27.7 million for the rehabilitation of around 500 apartments across its historic centre, islands and mainland neighbourhoods, but it has approximately 2,000 unoccupied properties that could also be put to use. “It’s something shocking, paradoxical,” Polloni added.
