Venice tourist tax earns city millions – LocalNews8.com

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, Jessica Small and Erica Hill, CNN

Venice, Italy (CNN) — Officials in Venice are calling the temporary admission fee to the city a success, and are currently experimenting with measures to control the number of visitors.

A 29-day €5 reservation revenue and booking experiment, which began on April 25 and ran on select days until July 14, raised €2,425,310 (about $2.64 million), Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said. The city initially expected to raise about €700,000 (about $762,163) when the plan was introduced, the mayor had said in April.

A total of 3,618,114 people made a reservation, of which 1,398,084 were exempt from payment because they stayed in hotels.

Other exceptions included 651,254 workers who traveled to the city on days when the entrance fee was in effect, as well as 466,819 students and 217,589 residents who did not have to pay an entrance fee.

In addition, 78,224 people were exempted because they were relatives of residents, and 107,146 were exempted for “other” reasons, including being born in the city, religious activities such as the visit of the Pope, and participation in cultural events, according to data released by the City of Venice.

Saturdays are the most popular

“A preliminary reading of the data shows that day trippers and tourists prefer Saturdays over Sundays, and that during all 29 days of the experiment, no peak visit day was reached, equal to that of April 30, 2023,” the city said in a statement, adding that the number of people coming to the city on “red flag days” has gradually decreased over time.

“The experiment worked and we can move on. A more in-depth analysis of the data collected in the fall,” Brugnaro said at a news conference on Friday.

A CNN team on the ground in Venice noted that locals told them that the crowds seemed noticeably smaller than usual. While still busy, residents felt that the crowds ahead of the city’s summer event, the Redeemer Festival, were not as large as in previous years.

The admission fee officially ended on July 14, but the mayor’s office said they will now determine whether to reinstate it during peak times of the year. No official date has been announced.

“It is a positive balance: the first 29 days of the experiment finally gave the city a tool that allowed us to know objectively how many people would come to Venice and to act accordingly,” said Simone Venturini, councillor for tourism.

Venice’s mayor and two aides are currently under investigation for corruption in connection with the alleged approval of a 3.7 million-square-foot commercial real estate development by a Singapore developer in exchange for $164 million, police said. Brugnaro has publicly denied the allegations, but a council member has resigned. The CNN team saw a banner calling for the mayor’s resignation.

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