Remember when we shared eerie images of Empty museums, restaurants, and deserted town squares in Europe? With the pandemic slowly coming in control and restrictions loosening up, popular tourist destinations such as Venice resort to an entry fee to control overcrowding. While it’s good to see the tourism industry reviving itself, travel-hungry tourists are descending in huge swathes on Venice, forcing them to impose an entry fee set between $3.52 and $11.73, depending on the season.
Venice is indisputably one of the world’s top tourist destinations, and plans to control the inflow of tourists have been in the pipeline for years. Come summer 2022, in order to manage the number of tourists arriving in the city, visitors will be required to reserve access in advance. In addition to this, turnstiles will be installed at the main access points of the city’s historical center. Covid-19 has given shape to those plans to restrain mass arrivals and improve the quality of the experience for both visitors and residents.
Plans were revealed via Italian newspaper La Stampa over the weekend that a package of measures designed to control tourism was in place. Residents and their relatives, children under six, and people staying in local hotels will be exempt from the measures. Currently, Venice is receiving at least 80,000 people a day which is a stark contrast to the pandemic’s peak, when tourism in Venice dried up, leading to the water in the city’s famous canals becoming noticeably clearer.
