Venice mayor proposes dynamic pricing for day-trippers with 50-euro ceiling

Stewards check tourists QR code access outside the main train station in Venice, Italy, on April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

MILAN — Venice’s new mayor is proposing a dynamic pricing system for the city’s three-year-old day-tripper access fee, seeking government approval to raise the charge to as much as 50 euros (US$59) on the busiest days to ease overcrowding in the UNESCO world heritage city.

Mayor Simone Venturini told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that the current 10-euro fee for last-minute reservations has not done enough to discourage visitors on peak days. Instead of imposing a fixed higher fee, the city wants to enact a form of surge-pricing, allowing the charge to rise with demand on the busiest days.

Venturini said the system would both discourage overcrowding and help cover the costs of maintaining the city.

“We spend 100 million euros a year just to maintain Venice physically, and nobody gives us that money. Not Europe. Not the Italian state. International critics don’t pay it either. It’s paid by the people of Venice, and in part through tourism taxes,” said Venturini, who was elected mayor last month after serving as the city’s top tourism official when the day-tripper tax was launched in 2024.

The access fee itself has been widely criticized by activists, housing advocates and opposition politicians for not doing enough to ease crowding in the city, while reducing Venice to a tourist attraction by charging admission. They also say the focus is too much on managing tourist flows, and not enough on bringing more residents back to the historic part of the city.

Venturini said the money is necessary to clean and maintain the city. The proposal for a surge-pricing structure would require an amendment to Italy’s special law governing Venice, and Venturini said he had already discussed the idea with the tourism minister.

“Day-trippers obviously generate waste — they eat, they drink, they throw things away. That comes at a huge cost,” which he said are driven up “because everything has to be done by hand, with brooms, boats and handcarts.”

While the 50-euro price proposal has made headlines and drawn criticism for being prohibitive for many visitors, particularly families, Venturini said the amount was chosen as an upper limit, giving the city room to experiment with different pricing levels. He said they are still working with researchers to determine the right threshold.

“If, for example, more than 40,000 people had already booked for a given day, those above that threshold might be asked to pay a little more—20, 25 or 30 euros,” Venturini said. “We asked for a broad range, up to 50 euros, and then it would be up to the city to manage the system through further testing. It doesn’t mean everyone who comes to Venice would pay 50 euros.”

While opposition politicians have proposed putting a cap on the number of visitors a day, Venturini said current Italian law does not allow that.

The number of residents of Venice’s canaled historic center has dropped to below 48,000 — while the number of tourist beds has risen to more than 51,500, according to the most recent figures tracked by the Ocio housing advocacy group from January.

Venturini argued that the city’s population is understated because many students and seasonal workers spend most of the year in Venice without registering as residents.

“That doesn’t mean we are satisfied. We need to do more,” he said.

Venice collected 2.4 million euros on 29 peak days from more than 485,000 day-trippers during the test phase in 2024. That rose to 5.4 million euros last year after Venice increased the number of days to 54 and doubled the fee to 10 euros for last-minute registrations on the city platform. This year, an additional six days have been added, but no figures have yet been released on arrivals or revenues.

Venturini said the money collected covers “only a small part of the costs of managing tourism.”

“The goal is not to raise money or to turn Venice into a ticketed city,” he said. “The goal is to give both residents and visitors a better experience on days when the city would otherwise be too crowded.”

Colleen Barry, The Associated Press