Day “x” has arrived, from today, to visit Venice for a day it is necessary to have a reservation and, for those who live outside the borders of Veneto, the payment of a 5 euro ticket. As long as you arrive between 8am and 4.30pm. Then, the access fee is not necessary. At the moment, more than two hundred thousand people have requested the QR code to enter the city in all twenty-nine days in which the new instrument is in force (from today to 5 May and every weekend until 14 July), while 82 thousand have arriving today. «The access fee is an experiment, the first in the world – says the mayor Luigi Brugnaro -, an attempt to manage tourist flows, to guarantee a better quality of life for residents and visits for our guests.”
We started talking about the ticket before Covid, when the administration got the green light from the government for the tax. However, the pandemic stopped the process and now that tourist attendance is once again a record high, the contribution has arrived. With an ad hoc regulation, a portal («cda.ve.it») where you can registera small army of stewards to provide information to those arriving in the city and controllers to verify that everyone is in order with their reservation. In all, 120 workers. Together with a totem with instructions for use and a stand for paying the 5 euros on site or to request exemption, if you are entitled to it. For today, there are 7,266 paying tourists (equal to 36,330 euros collected), while 30,300 QR codes have been issued to visitors who stay in hotels or tourist rentals and who do not have to pay the ticket by paying the tourist tax. Also exempt are 9,450 residents of Veneto who have planned an April 25th in the lagoon. While 1,363 guests are expected by residents. Then there are 15 thousand workers without residence in the city employed in hotels, museums, offices, restaurants and shops and around 11 thousand students. In all, 82,596 people who, for various reasons, registered on «cda.ve.it». But it is likely that the numbers will rise during the day. «We will not leave anyone out, Venice will not become a closed city», underlines Brugnaro. For this, you can also get in order upon arrival in Venice or, for those who are less comfortable with the web, in one of the thirty thousand PuntoLis tobacconists in Italy where it is possible to obtain the pass.
The contribution, in addition to managing flows, has the objective of collecting data on those who arrive, work and live in Venice. Something has already emerged from the 200 thousand reservations. Among the streets and fields there would not only be the 48,933 “certified” inhabitants: from the requests for exemption it emerges that there are around twenty thousand “invisibles” with a rent that does not allow residence but who work, study, shop and frequent bars and restaurants in Venice. A fact, among other things, also confirmed by water consumption and which estimates that the permanent inhabitants are over 60 thousand.
The obligation to register also for tourists who sleep in the city could (it is one of the objectives of the Municipality) bring out the black market in non-hotel accommodation. The tourist who asks for the QR code indicating that he is sleeping in a structure unknown to the tax authorities and administration, in fact, reports it. «It will take time to have clear numbers», observes Brugnaro. That is, it will take the whole of 2024, so «we will decide which system to apply. We have cameras at key points, the control of those who pass thanks to the cell phone hooks”, he adds. In 2025, a capacity limit could be introduced, beyond which the ticket cost doubles. Meanwhile we start today, with the protest of the No ticket committees at 10.30 in Piazzale Roma.
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