Venice is full. That message was delivered very literally by the historic canal city last week as it continues to create obstacles for tourists to prevent them from destroying the floating Italian getaway irreparably.
Venice will place a 25-person limit on the size of groups that can congregate in the city, the Venice City Council said in a statement Saturday.
That will cap groups to the size of about half the capacity of a tourist bus, the council pointed out, possibly deterring tour guides from operating trips to the city. The council said the number was determined as it aligned with limits placed on groups inside Venice’s museums.
The move, which comes into effect on June 1, will also apply to the nearby islands of Murano, Burano, and Torcello.
“The administration not only wants to give precise rules for respecting the fragility of Venice, the traffic and coexistence with those who live in Venice, but also give a signal regarding the presence of unauthorized tourist guides, which with this new article will no longer be tolerated,” the council said.
Venice is also prohibiting those tour guides from using loudspeakers to direct their groups, which it said “may cause confusion and disturbance” to residents in the city.
Venice tackles day-trippers
The UNESCO World Heritage site of Venice has for years been in a bind between the income generated by the estimated 20 million people visiting each year and the negative impacts they have had on the city and its residents.
Tourism contributed 13% to the city’s total GDP in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Art Newspaper reported via Corriere della Sera.
But overtourism has also helped to push out Venetian residents. The city’s population dropped to 50,000 in 2022 for the first time, down from 120,000 in the 1950s. That coincided with another milestone for the city, as tourist beds in Venice outnumbered residents for the first time too.
As its population shrinks, Venice’s reliance on the tourists it is trying to prevent is only likely to grow.
Several other European cities have been in their own tussles with foreign visitors over the last few years.
Portugal has cracked down on housebuying in its capital of Lisbon, where digital nomads have swarmed in recent years, enticed by tax breaks.
Amsterdam, meanwhile, has told young British men to “stay away” as part of a wider anti-immigration initiative aimed at cooling its housing market.
However, Venice’s latest moves are undoubtedly aimed at reducing the number of day-trippers to the city, who make up about 80% of the city’s total visitors, rather than long-term travelers.
Day-trippers provide much less revenue to the city than those staying overnight but still cause a drain on its resources.
Venice has previously targeted these types of travelers and will introduce a €5 ($5.47) entry fee for all tourists this year on select dates, as part of a further move to limit short-term stays.
In 2021, the city banned cruise ships from docking in its center following a request by UNESCO, after arguments that the massive vessels were helping to erode the city’s foundations.
Longer-term existential threats await the city, particularly rising sea levels that could permanently flood swathes of land on the site.
UNESCO nearly placed the city on its endangered list last year, saying it risked being destroyed by human-induced climate change, overtourism, and overdevelopment.
It decided not to add Venice to that list at a meeting in September.