Explainer | Venice to start charging day trippers entry fee in 2024 – why, how much will it be, and who is exempt?

The entry fee for day trippers – ‘not a tool for making cash’ – will be tested in 2024 on spring and summer weekends, including some Italian national holidays

Mass tourism to Venice began in the mid-1960s and visitor numbers have kept rising. In 2019 about 19 million day trippers – who do not stay overnight – visited

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Tourists crowd the area near the Rialto Bridge in Venice on a day in August 2023. The city council has approved guidelines for trials of a new entry fee in 2024 for day trippers visiting the city. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 1:45pm, 6 Sep 2023

Tourist-flooded Venice, in Italy, approved guidelines on September 5 for testing a new fee for day trippers on peak visitor weekends next year.

The city council gave the go-ahead for the guidelines, tweaking earlier plans for a fee that were announced a year ago. Final approval of the plan will come up for consideration on September 12.

The fee, initially €5 (US$5.50) per day tripper, is “not a tool for making cash”, the city said. Instead, the strategy aims to improve the quality of life for Venice’s dwindling number of full-time residents, as well as for overnight visitors; the latter already pay a lodging tax and so will be exempt from the fee.

The test will last about 30 days and take place in 2024 on spring weekends spanning Italian national holidays and on summer weekends. The exact days of the test will be set by the city in the coming weeks.

The island of Burano in Venice is characteristic for its colourful little houses and lace making. Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images

“The aim is to disincentivise daily tourism in certain periods, in line with the fragility and uniqueness of the city,” the council said.

Those exempted from the fee include people who commute to work in Venice or on the smaller islands, students, residents of the Veneto region, which includes the city, and those who pay taxes on local property. The fee will be applied to day trippers over the age of 14.

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