Venice will double its tourist entry fee to €10 in 2025, despite data that suggest the measure failed to reduce visitor numbers during its trial period in 2024.
The initial €5 fee was implemented to curb overtourism in a city that has become known for it. The fee was applied on 29 selected days between April and July 2024, all of them coinciding with the Venice Biennale, which brings in a vast number of international visitors from the art world to the city every two years.
According to data collected by city officials, there was an average increase of 7,000 visitors on these days compared to the same dates a year earlier in 2023. Venice, which has an estimated 50,000 residents, draws around 40,000 tourists daily.
In 2025, the plan will be expanded so that it applies to tourists entering the city on 54 days. Those days include weekends, public holidays, and peak travel periods between April 18 and late July. Visitors booking less than four days in advance will pay the €10 fee, which applies to day-trippers over age 14 entering Venice’s historic center between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Exemptions remain in place for Venetian residents, hotel guests, students, workers, and others.
In a statement to the Art Newspaper, Jan Van Der Borg, a tourism economics professor at Ca’ Foscari University, was critical of the fee structure, which he said would be ineffective at limiting growing crowds in Venice. “The ticket will increase municipal income but won’t impact tourist flows,” Van Der Borg said.
Italian officials overseeing plans for safeguarding Venice have continued to defend the scheme, claiming that it has allowed them to collect valuable information on tourists entering the city, whose existence is becoming more precarious with time.
