Overtourism in Venice has been widely documented in recent years, as cruise ships, daytrippers, airbnbs and tourist tack filled the city, and left little—if any—room for residents. But with the pause afforded by the pandemic, government and locals alike are looking for ways to rebuild better.
October 3rd, 2020. That was the day that changed everything for Venice.
For the first time in its history, the city built on water was no longer at the mercy of the Adriatic. The MOSE flood barriers, in the works since the 1980s, were finally raised during a high tide—and they worked. It means that we should never again see the devastation caused by floods in 1966 and 2019.
But October 3 was also the day that—to me at least—signaled a change for the future of Venice.
The Smart Control Room is a step up from your standard police CCTV room (though Venice also has one of those). It’s a €3m hi-tech project, monitoring footfall in the city. Not just how many people are in the two tourist hotspots—Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Bridge—but the route they took there, when they arrived, and where they’re from. All by using data from mobile phones.
When I first wrote about it, it predictably went around the world. “Venice spies on tourists”, was the general line… Because what the mayor’s office had said to me a year earlier was true: People love negative stories about Venice.
“I hope we don’t go back to how things were… To get Venice going again, you need to get people living here. If I were mayor, I’d try and get as many people to live here as possible.”
Paolo Garlato, pasticceria owner
The authorities have long been wanting to crack down on daytrippers. In fact, an entry tax for those not staying overnight begins in January 2022. The hope is that a maximum charge of €10 per person on busy days will make people think twice about an afternoon in Venice. But now, working out where these people come from, and where they walk, will help efforts to stem the flow.
Of course, working out who’s coming into the city is one thing; working out what to do about them is another. And what’s to be done about cruises? Airbnbs? The souvenir shops squeezing out artisans plying centuries-old trades? Tourist numbers aren’t expected to recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2023, and many Venetians are seeing this as a chance to reset.
