The Italian authorities have granted their final approval to the management of the historic center in Venice to carry out a trial period.
This trial period will require visitors to pay a fee of €5 every day in order to visit the well-known tourist attraction.
Consequently, any foreign tourist aged 14 or over will have to pay the fee and make a pre-booking to receive permission to enter the city.
Boosting tourism
According to Simone Venturini, a member of the municipal council in Italy that handles tourism, Venice is one of the top European cities to receive an excessive number of foreign tourists.
Thus, it has to bear the weight of excessive tourism, which is why the relevant authorities are taking steps to curb the number of travelers in the city.
This announcement comes after the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) stated that it intends to add Venice to its list of endangered cities.
Its reasoning behind doing so was that the city has suffered significant damage due to the high volume of travelers it receives.
UNESCO speaks out
On various occasions, UNESCO has expressed that it is dissatisfied with the progress being made by the tourism authorities in Venice to curb the influx of a high number of tourists.
As a result, it recommended that Venice and its lagoon should be added to the World Heritage in Danger List.
This is a comprehensive list of numerous sites across the globe that are considered to be threatened due to specific and serious dangers.
This warning from UNESCO came only a few weeks before the meeting of the 45th World Heritage Committee of the UN.
The committee will be meeting in Riyadh to vote on the issue.
Tourism in Venice
In the last couple of decades, Venice has undergone a significant change due to the proliferation of low-cost and affordable airlines.
These facilitated no less than 25 million tourists to visit the renowned city back in 2019, with this figure being predicted to cross 38 million by the end of 2025.
However, not even a century has passed, and the population of the city has dwindled from 150,000 to 50,000.
The reason behind this was the rising financial challenges being faced by older families, which prompted them to move to the mainland.
Consequently, they converted their own properties into accommodations that could be used by tourists on vacation.
While Venice was designated a World Heritage Site back in 1987 and has received a large number of visitors since, there is no denying that it has been struggling.
In 2019, it was given a warning from UNESCO on account of the large cruise ships it hosted for day-trippers, causing overcrowding in the area.
The authority warned the city of the negative effects of consistently running large cruise ships for hundreds of passengers.
As a result, Venice went on to implement a couple of measures to curb these issues, such as the introduction of entry fees and daily capacity limits.
