Venice begins charging day-trippers €5 to enter city

ITV News Europe Editor James Mates is in Venice speaking to locals and tourists alike on how the new tax will impact their lives

Venice has launched its pilot plan to charge day-trippers five euros to enter the city, in an attempt to reduce the number of tourists visiting.

Those only spending the day in the city will need to pay if they are arriving between 8.30am and 4pm. Outside of those hours people will be free to come and go as they please.

Those tourists also staying within the city are exempt from the charge.

Signs alerting arriving visitors to the new requirement have appeared outside the main train station and at other arrival points.

Some 200 stewards have been trained to politely walk anyone unaware of the fee through the process of downloading a QR code and a kiosk has been set up for anybody who doesn't have a smartphone.

Once past the designated entry points, officials will carry out random checks for the code that show the day-tripper tax has been paid or that the bearer is exempt.

Anybody found to have dodged the fare faces fines of between 50 euros to 300 euros (£42-£257).

“We need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents,’’ the city’s top tourism official Simone Venturini said.

“We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days.”

The city has implemented an array of measures in recent years to try and reduce the number of visitors during peak times and improve the living conditions for residents.

Authorities announced a limit on the size of walking tour groups and a ban on loudspeakers last year, while then-Prime Minister Mario Draghi pledged to ban cruise ships from the Venice lagoon in 2021.

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