Admission for tourists

Venice has already collected €700,000 from day visitors

Tourists are coming to Venice despite the fee.(Bild: AP/Luca Bruno)

The daily fee for tourists, which has been charged since April 25, has so far brought the municipality of Venice revenue of €723,225. 144,645 people have already paid the special tax of five euros.

The revenue is now higher than expected by the municipality. However, they do not yet cover the costs of the booking portal, the communication campaign and the monitoring of the entrance fee, the municipality announced.

Admission fee involves a lot of effort
The entrance fee will be charged on a total of 29 days in 2024: from April 25 to 30, from May 1 to 5 and on all other weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) until July 13 and 14. This excludes the weekend of Republic Day (June 1 to 2), a national holiday in Italy. Visitors to the smaller islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello do not need a ticket.

All visitors who want to enter the lagoon city between 8.30 am and 4 pm have to pay. To do so, they must purchase a QR code online in advance, which will be checked at the main access points to the city. Checkpoints have been set up in Piazzale Roma near the train station, at the Punta Sabbioni ferry port and in Chioggia. Every day, around 75 people are deployed at 16 locations in the city to check the QR code. 

This is what the checks look like.(Bild: AP)

Much discussion about the fee
However, the daily fee is causing some debate: City council member Michele Boato asked for a review of the processing of the data. He warned of the risk of personal data being passed on and called for strict controls.

The city administration expects to collect meaningful data on tourism in order to organize phase two of the entrance fee: in 2025, the number of days with registration and payment is to be increased. A maximum number of tourists in the historic center will also be introduced, after which the fee will rise from five to ten euros.

Citizens from the Veneto region, workers and students are currently exempt from the tax. Children under the age of 14, disabled people and accompanying persons are also required to book but not to pay. Visitors can purchase their tickets on the multilingual website www.cda.ve.it set up by the municipality. Payment can be made by credit card or Paypal. The ticket can also be purchased at tobacconists.

Venice is in danger of "dying out"
Venice is in danger of "dying out" under the pressure of mass tourism. In the old town, the number of tourist beds overtook the number of inhabitants in December. There were 50,016 guest beds and 49,211 residents. Including mainland residents, Venice has a good 260,000 inhabitants. More and more are moving away from the old town.