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IOL News
14-05-2025
- IOL News
Venice: where tourists float and locals sink – the battle for the city's soul
Tourist on on a gondola in Venice. Image: Pexels Venice, the city of canals, gondolas and timeless romance, attracts an estimated 30 million tourists each year, a staggering number compared to the dwindling local population, now under 50 000. While it's easy to see why the floating city is a global bucket-list favourite, Venetians say their home is at risk of losing its soul. Famous for its grand palazzos, historic churches and dreamy gondola rides along the Grand Canal, Venice offers centuries of art, architecture and romance. But for locals, the day-to-day reality is far less picturesque. Most housing has been converted into short-term rentals, shops cater to visitors instead of residents, and jobs outside the tourism industry have become scarce. The situation echoes what's been seen in Spain, where local communities, especially in hotspots like Mallorca and the Canary Islands, have launched anti-tourism protests, urging foreign visitors to rethink their travel plans. In Venice, frustration is mounting too, particularly because around 90% of visitors are day-trippers, meaning they place pressure on city services without supporting the local economy. 'No wonder some people call Venice the 'dying city' and the 'sinking city,'' said Simone Venturini, the city councillor for tourism, in CNN's "The Whole Story: Saving Venice". To address the issue, authorities trialled a €5 day-tripper fee (R100 in South African rand) in 2024, a move set to be repeated in 2025. The city also uses a 'Smart Control Room' to monitor visitor flows. While some residents view these as positive steps, others worry they're not enough. There are currently over 8 000 Airbnb listings in Venice, 77% of which are entire properties. Many are managed by hosts with multiple listings, not simply locals renting out their spare room. 'We have nothing against private property, but if you rent 20 houses only to tourists, then you become a problem for your community,' said Dal Carlo, a Venetian who now lives on the mainland. Venice attracts an estimated 30 million tourists each year. Image: Pexels In response, alternative platforms like Fairbnb have emerged, offering rentals owned only by locals and capping the number of properties per host. Half of the booking fees are also reinvested into local projects. But as Carlo warns, 'There's not going to be another Venice. Once you have helped change this place forever, it's not coming back.' Despite the challenges, many Venetians are finding ways to resist the tide. Some keep cultural traditions alive, like the voga alla veneta, a stand-up rowing technique still used in city regattas. Another person taking up the baton is a designer, who returned to her native Venice during the pandemic after living abroad. Wanting to contribute to the community's resilience, she opened a shop where she crafts products that resemble souvenirs. Her signature items are candles and soaps shaped like the architectural flourishes of Venetian Gothic buildings. She started by making lollipops that mirror the iconic pattern of the Doge's Palace colonnade. Others lead sustainable tourism initiatives such as rowing tours through the lesser-known canals, showing visitors the city from a local perspective. Fabio Carrera, founder of the Venice Project Center, believes it's not too late to save the city. "I think enough people realise that the [tourism] card has been overplayed now and there's going to be some sort of retrenching,' he said. His team has studied ways to reduce the environmental and structural impact of tourism, including new boat routes and the potential for a microalgae farm in the lagoon. Of course, the lagoon is Venice's lifeline and its greatest vulnerability. Rising sea levels and increased maritime traffic have led to more frequent flooding. The MOSE flood barrier system, introduced in 2020 after decades of planning, was designed to be used sparingly but was activated 33 times in just its first 14 months. Still, Carrera remains hopeful. 'I'm oddly optimistic,' he said. He envisions a future where people can live in Venice and work on the mainland via improved transport links. Others believe attracting a broader population beyond tourism workers is essential to restoring balance. 'Venice was never a city of shop owners and renters. That's what it's become,' Carlo said.
CNN
10-05-2025
- CNN
Rising waters and overtourism are killing Venice. Now the fight is on to save its soul
Gondolas, canals and all those bridges. For many tourists, Venice is all that and only that: the floating city born for Instagram. For others it's a symbol of the excesses of the modern world: a city turned into a theme park, trampled by overtourism and hollowed out by vacation rentals. The statistics are stark. Around 30 million tourists visit Venice every year, dwarfing the local population, which has now dwindled to less than 50,000. Venetians wanting to remain in their city face a lack of housing stock — since homes have been converted into vacation rentals — a lack of shops for day-to-day life, and a lack of jobs for anyone not involved in the tourist industry. In the meantime, the visitors keep coming, and keep posting those delectable canal shots on Instagram. Around 90% of them are thought to be day-trippers — so although they don't take up that ever-dwindling housing stock, they use city resources but leave virtually no money behind in the local economy. No wonder some people call Venice the 'dying city' and the 'sinking city,' Simone Venturini, the city councilor for tourism, tells CNN in documentary 'The Whole Story: Saving Venice.' But while the city authorities' actions — like the 5 euro (roughly $5) daytripper fee trialed in 2024 and set to be repeated in 2025, and the Smart Control Room, which monitors the movements of visitors to the city — have met a mixed response, plenty of other Venetians are taking their own steps to preserve life in the city as they know it. What's more, many of them are working with visitors, hoping to allay the damage caused by mass tourism with more sustainable projects. In 2018, Emanuele Dal Carlo launched Fairbnb — a platform for vacation rentals owned strictly by local residents. One of the major reasons for the exodus of Venetians to the mainland in recent years is the dearth of housing stock in the city. There are currently 8,322 Airbnb listings in Venice according to Inside Airbnb, 77% of which are entire properties. Two thirds of hosts have multiple listings –— meaning they're not just renting out their spare room, or their late nonna's apartment. 'We have nothing against private property, but if you rent 20 houses only to tourists, then you become a problem for your community,' says Dal Carlo, who is one of the tens of thousands of Venetians who have left the city for the mainland, a 10-minute train ride (plus ferry ride to the city center) away. Fairbnb is a similar platform — but all its rentals are owned by local residents, and owners are capped on the number of properties they can advertise. What's more, 50% of the platform fees are channeled into an on-the-ground project in the destination they are visiting. Tourists may feel that they're not doing much harm by renting a regular apartment for a few days, but with a rapidly depleting housing stock for locals, Dal Carlo warns that there's a tipping point. 'There's not going to be another Venice,' he says. 'Once you have helped change this place forever, it's not coming back.' Other residents fight decline by keeping traditions going. Elena Almansi practices voga alla veneta, the stand-up rowing technique used by Venetians to navigate the lagoon for centuries. A competitor in Venice's regular regattas, she's one of a group of women offering rowing lessons with Row Venice, a sustainable tourism initiative which takes visitors on trips through the canals of the city, seeing its buildings the way they were meant to be seen: from the water. Then there's Matteo Silverio, whose startup, Rehub, takes waste materials from the famous glassblowing process on Murano, and upcyles it, using a 3D printer to turn it into artistic creations, including crockery. Another person taking up the baton is Michela Bortolozzi, a designer who had lived abroad but returned to her native city during the pandemic. Realizing she wanted to stay and buffer the community, she opened a shop, now called Relight Venice, where she makes products that look like souvenirs but give you pause for thought. Her signature products are candles and soaps taking the form of the architectural flourishes of the Venetian gothic architecture. She started off by making lollipops using the pattern of the Doge's Palace's famous colonnade. 'That was the question: you want to consume it or keep it?' she asks. 'My point is that Venice is as beautiful as my product — much more so. Don't consume Venice because we cannot rebuild or re-buy it.' She hopes that other young people will open similar businesses. 'If we can fight, we can stay,' she says. Is it not already too late to save Venice? Not according to Fabio Carrera, whose Venice Project Center at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts has been studying the city's problems since 1988. Born in Venice, he splits his time between Italy and the US. 'I think enough people realize that the [tourism] card has been overplayed now and there's going to be some sort of retrenching,' he says, mentioning the recent protests in destinations like Mallorca and the Canary Islands as examples of local communities pushing back. 'I'm oddly optimistic,' he says. Carrera's team studies ways to improve the liveability of the city, from introducing boat routes for deliveries in order to cut down on moto ondoso (the waves produced by boats which slap against and weaken the city foundations) to looking at the potential for a microalgae farm in the lagoon. The lagoon is of course Venice's blessing and curse. It was the water that allowed the city to become one of the most formidable maritime powers of the medieval and renaissance periods, and found the Republic of Venice — still to this day the world's longest-lasting republic. But new canals cut through the lagoon during the industrial age, increasing maritime traffic and rising water levels due to climate change all mean that the city is flooding easier and more frequently than ever before. In 2020, Venice saw the debut of the MOSE flood barriers, which had been in the works since 1988. But already the barriers — which were designed to be raised a handful of times each year — are in frequent use, especially during the fall and winter. In its first 14 months, the system was used 33 times. Not only does this have sweeping cost implications — the barriers cost around 200,000 euros ($206,000) to raise every time — but there are knock-on effects for the lagoon, which is 'designed' by nature to flush itself out twice a day. Closing the barriers also means closing off access to the port, which is one of the most important in Italy. But while scientists are studying how to handle the lagoon, Carrera is looking at more practical issues to combat Venice's major social problem: the lack of residents. For starters, he thinks a better transport system would help attract people to live in Venice. 'It could make a big difference if we had, say, a subway system which was talked about for a while,' he says. 'You could live in Venice and work on the mainland and get there real quick. On the mainland around Venice, there are plenty of jobs, hi tech jobs — all the stuff we're talking about bring here already, is there.' Dal Carlo agrees that attracting people who have nothing to do with tourism to live in Venice is key. 'I think it's important that we are trying to attract people, or to maintain here people that are clever, entrepreneurial because that is in the genes of the city,' he says, adding that Venice was never 'a city of shop owners and renters. That's what it's become.' Bortolozzi believes that responsible tourism can help. 'I think it is important that if people from abroad meet a local person to get to know the culture, get to know the tradition, get to know our problem and our happiness… he can maybe enjoy Venice in a nice way and maybe help us to preserve it,' she says. Cesare Perris, who owns Squero San Isepo, one of the last boatyards in the city, fears it might be too late to help Venice — but adds that, if it isn't, it could be huge. He quotes a friend, who likes to say that saving Venice is the same as saving the world from mass tourism: 'If you find a way to have tourists in Venice that don't kill the city, we maybe find the method to save all the cities of the world.'
CNN
10-05-2025
- CNN
Rising waters and overtourism are killing Venice. Now the fight is on to save its soul
Gondolas, canals and all those bridges. For many tourists, Venice is all that and only that: the floating city born for Instagram. For others it's a symbol of the excesses of the modern world: a city turned into a theme park, trampled by overtourism and hollowed out by vacation rentals. The statistics are stark. Around 30 million tourists visit Venice every year, dwarfing the local population, which has now dwindled to less than 50,000. Venetians wanting to remain in their city face a lack of housing stock — since homes have been converted into vacation rentals — a lack of shops for day-to-day life, and a lack of jobs for anyone not involved in the tourist industry. In the meantime, the visitors keep coming, and keep posting those delectable canal shots on Instagram. Around 90% of them are thought to be day-trippers — so although they don't take up that ever-dwindling housing stock, they use city resources but leave virtually no money behind in the local economy. No wonder some people call Venice the 'dying city' and the 'sinking city,' Simone Venturini, the city councilor for tourism, tells CNN in documentary 'The Whole Story: Saving Venice.' But while the city authorities' actions — like the 5 euro (roughly $5) daytripper fee trialed in 2024 and set to be repeated in 2025, and the Smart Control Room, which monitors the movements of visitors to the city — have met a mixed response, plenty of other Venetians are taking their own steps to preserve life in the city as they know it. What's more, many of them are working with visitors, hoping to allay the damage caused by mass tourism with more sustainable projects. In 2018, Emanuele Dal Carlo launched Fairbnb — a platform for vacation rentals owned strictly by local residents. One of the major reasons for the exodus of Venetians to the mainland in recent years is the dearth of housing stock in the city. There are currently 8,322 Airbnb listings in Venice according to Inside Airbnb, 77% of which are entire properties. Two thirds of hosts have multiple listings –— meaning they're not just renting out their spare room, or their late nonna's apartment. 'We have nothing against private property, but if you rent 20 houses only to tourists, then you become a problem for your community,' says Dal Carlo, who is one of the tens of thousands of Venetians who have left the city for the mainland, a 10-minute train ride (plus ferry ride to the city center) away. Fairbnb is a similar platform — but all its rentals are owned by local residents, and owners are capped on the number of properties they can advertise. What's more, 50% of the platform fees are channeled into an on-the-ground project in the destination they are visiting. Tourists may feel that they're not doing much harm by renting a regular apartment for a few days, but with a rapidly depleting housing stock for locals, Dal Carlo warns that there's a tipping point. 'There's not going to be another Venice,' he says. 'Once you have helped change this place forever, it's not coming back.' Other residents fight decline by keeping traditions going. Elena Almansi practices voga alla veneta, the stand-up rowing technique used by Venetians to navigate the lagoon for centuries. A competitor in Venice's regular regattas, she's one of a group of women offering rowing lessons with Row Venice, a sustainable tourism initiative which takes visitors on trips through the canals of the city, seeing its buildings the way they were meant to be seen: from the water. Then there's Matteo Silverio, whose startup, Rehub, takes waste materials from the famous glassblowing process on Murano, and upcyles it, using a 3D printer to turn it into artistic creations, including crockery. Another person taking up the baton is Michela Bortolozzi, a designer who had lived abroad but returned to her native city during the pandemic. Realizing she wanted to stay and buffer the community, she opened a shop, now called Relight Venice, where she makes products that look like souvenirs but give you pause for thought. Her signature products are candles and soaps taking the form of the architectural flourishes of the Venetian gothic architecture. She started off by making lollipops using the pattern of the Doge's Palace's famous colonnade. 'That was the question: you want to consume it or keep it?' she asks. 'My point is that Venice is as beautiful as my product — much more so. Don't consume Venice because we cannot rebuild or re-buy it.' She hopes that other young people will open similar businesses. 'If we can fight, we can stay,' she says. Is it not already too late to save Venice? Not according to Fabio Carrera, whose Venice Project Center at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts has been studying the city's problems since 1988. Born in Venice, he splits his time between Italy and the US. 'I think enough people realize that the [tourism] card has been overplayed now and there's going to be some sort of retrenching,' he says, mentioning the recent protests in destinations like Mallorca and the Canary Islands as examples of local communities pushing back. 'I'm oddly optimistic,' he says. Carrera's team studies ways to improve the liveability of the city, from introducing boat routes for deliveries in order to cut down on moto ondoso (the waves produced by boats which slap against and weaken the city foundations) to looking at the potential for a microalgae farm in the lagoon. The lagoon is of course Venice's blessing and curse. It was the water that allowed the city to become one of the most formidable maritime powers of the medieval and renaissance periods, and found the Republic of Venice — still to this day the world's longest-lasting republic. But new canals cut through the lagoon during the industrial age, increasing maritime traffic and rising water levels due to climate change all mean that the city is flooding easier and more frequently than ever before. In 2020, Venice saw the debut of the MOSE flood barriers, which had been in the works since 1988. But already the barriers — which were designed to be raised a handful of times each year — are in frequent use, especially during the fall and winter. In its first 14 months, the system was used 33 times. Not only does this have sweeping cost implications — the barriers cost around 200,000 euros ($206,000) to raise every time — but there are knock-on effects for the lagoon, which is 'designed' by nature to flush itself out twice a day. Closing the barriers also means closing off access to the port, which is one of the most important in Italy. But while scientists are studying how to handle the lagoon, Carrera is looking at more practical issues to combat Venice's major social problem: the lack of residents. For starters, he thinks a better transport system would help attract people to live in Venice. 'It could make a big difference if we had, say, a subway system which was talked about for a while,' he says. 'You could live in Venice and work on the mainland and get there real quick. On the mainland around Venice, there are plenty of jobs, hi tech jobs — all the stuff we're talking about bring here already, is there.' Dal Carlo agrees that attracting people who have nothing to do with tourism to live in Venice is key. 'I think it's important that we are trying to attract people, or to maintain here people that are clever, entrepreneurial because that is in the genes of the city,' he says, adding that Venice was never 'a city of shop owners and renters. That's what it's become.' Bortolozzi believes that responsible tourism can help. 'I think it is important that if people from abroad meet a local person to get to know the culture, get to know the tradition, get to know our problem and our happiness… he can maybe enjoy Venice in a nice way and maybe help us to preserve it,' she says. Cesare Perris, who owns Squero San Isepo, one of the last boatyards in the city, fears it might be too late to help Venice — but adds that, if it isn't, it could be huge. He quotes a friend, who likes to say that saving Venice is the same as saving the world from mass tourism: 'If you find a way to have tourists in Venice that don't kill the city, we maybe find the method to save all the cities of the world.'
CNN
10-05-2025
- CNN
Rising waters and overtourism are killing Venice. Now the fight is on to save its soul
Gondolas, canals and all those bridges. For many tourists, Venice is all that and only that: the floating city born for Instagram. For others it's a symbol of the excesses of the modern world: a city turned into a theme park, trampled by overtourism and hollowed out by vacation rentals. The statistics are stark. Around 30 million tourists visit Venice every year, dwarfing the local population, which has now dwindled to less than 50,000. Venetians wanting to remain in their city face a lack of housing stock — since homes have been converted into vacation rentals — a lack of shops for day-to-day life, and a lack of jobs for anyone not involved in the tourist industry. In the meantime, the visitors keep coming, and keep posting those delectable canal shots on Instagram. Around 90% of them are thought to be day-trippers — so although they don't take up that ever-dwindling housing stock, they use city resources but leave virtually no money behind in the local economy. No wonder some people call Venice the 'dying city' and the 'sinking city,' Simone Venturini, the city councilor for tourism, tells CNN in documentary 'The Whole Story: Saving Venice.' But while the city authorities' actions — like the 5 euro (roughly $5) daytripper fee trialed in 2024 and set to be repeated in 2025, and the Smart Control Room, which monitors the movements of visitors to the city — have met a mixed response, plenty of other Venetians are taking their own steps to preserve life in the city as they know it. What's more, many of them are working with visitors, hoping to allay the damage caused by mass tourism with more sustainable projects. In 2018, Emanuele Dal Carlo launched Fairbnb — a platform for vacation rentals owned strictly by local residents. One of the major reasons for the exodus of Venetians to the mainland in recent years is the dearth of housing stock in the city. There are currently 8,322 Airbnb listings in Venice according to Inside Airbnb, 77% of which are entire properties. Two thirds of hosts have multiple listings –— meaning they're not just renting out their spare room, or their late nonna's apartment. 'We have nothing against private property, but if you rent 20 houses only to tourists, then you become a problem for your community,' says Dal Carlo, who is one of the tens of thousands of Venetians who have left the city for the mainland, a 10-minute train ride (plus ferry ride to the city center) away. Fairbnb is a similar platform — but all its rentals are owned by local residents, and owners are capped on the number of properties they can advertise. What's more, 50% of the platform fees are channeled into an on-the-ground project in the destination they are visiting. Tourists may feel that they're not doing much harm by renting a regular apartment for a few days, but with a rapidly depleting housing stock for locals, Dal Carlo warns that there's a tipping point. 'There's not going to be another Venice,' he says. 'Once you have helped change this place forever, it's not coming back.' Other residents fight decline by keeping traditions going. Elena Almansi practices voga alla veneta, the stand-up rowing technique used by Venetians to navigate the lagoon for centuries. A competitor in Venice's regular regattas, she's one of a group of women offering rowing lessons with Row Venice, a sustainable tourism initiative which takes visitors on trips through the canals of the city, seeing its buildings the way they were meant to be seen: from the water. Then there's Matteo Silverio, whose startup, Rehub, takes waste materials from the famous glassblowing process on Murano, and upcyles it, using a 3D printer to turn it into artistic creations, including crockery. Another person taking up the baton is Michela Bortolozzi, a designer who had lived abroad but returned to her native city during the pandemic. Realizing she wanted to stay and buffer the community, she opened a shop, now called Relight Venice, where she makes products that look like souvenirs but give you pause for thought. Her signature products are candles and soaps taking the form of the architectural flourishes of the Venetian gothic architecture. She started off by making lollipops using the pattern of the Doge's Palace's famous colonnade. 'That was the question: you want to consume it or keep it?' she asks. 'My point is that Venice is as beautiful as my product — much more so. Don't consume Venice because we cannot rebuild or re-buy it.' She hopes that other young people will open similar businesses. 'If we can fight, we can stay,' she says. Is it not already too late to save Venice? Not according to Fabio Carrera, whose Venice Project Center at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts has been studying the city's problems since 1988. Born in Venice, he splits his time between Italy and the US. 'I think enough people realize that the [tourism] card has been overplayed now and there's going to be some sort of retrenching,' he says, mentioning the recent protests in destinations like Mallorca and the Canary Islands as examples of local communities pushing back. 'I'm oddly optimistic,' he says. Carrera's team studies ways to improve the liveability of the city, from introducing boat routes for deliveries in order to cut down on moto ondoso (the waves produced by boats which slap against and weaken the city foundations) to looking at the potential for a microalgae farm in the lagoon. The lagoon is of course Venice's blessing and curse. It was the water that allowed the city to become one of the most formidable maritime powers of the medieval and renaissance periods, and found the Republic of Venice — still to this day the world's longest-lasting republic. But new canals cut through the lagoon during the industrial age, increasing maritime traffic and rising water levels due to climate change all mean that the city is flooding easier and more frequently than ever before. In 2020, Venice saw the debut of the MOSE flood barriers, which had been in the works since 1988. But already the barriers — which were designed to be raised a handful of times each year — are in frequent use, especially during the fall and winter. In its first 14 months, the system was used 33 times. Not only does this have sweeping cost implications — the barriers cost around 200,000 euros ($206,000) to raise every time — but there are knock-on effects for the lagoon, which is 'designed' by nature to flush itself out twice a day. Closing the barriers also means closing off access to the port, which is one of the most important in Italy. But while scientists are studying how to handle the lagoon, Carrera is looking at more practical issues to combat Venice's major social problem: the lack of residents. For starters, he thinks a better transport system would help attract people to live in Venice. 'It could make a big difference if we had, say, a subway system which was talked about for a while,' he says. 'You could live in Venice and work on the mainland and get there real quick. On the mainland around Venice, there are plenty of jobs, hi tech jobs — all the stuff we're talking about bring here already, is there.' Dal Carlo agrees that attracting people who have nothing to do with tourism to live in Venice is key. 'I think it's important that we are trying to attract people, or to maintain here people that are clever, entrepreneurial because that is in the genes of the city,' he says, adding that Venice was never 'a city of shop owners and renters. That's what it's become.' Bortolozzi believes that responsible tourism can help. 'I think it is important that if people from abroad meet a local person to get to know the culture, get to know the tradition, get to know our problem and our happiness… he can maybe enjoy Venice in a nice way and maybe help us to preserve it,' she says. Cesare Perris, who owns Squero San Isepo, one of the last boatyards in the city, fears it might be too late to help Venice — but adds that, if it isn't, it could be huge. He quotes a friend, who likes to say that saving Venice is the same as saving the world from mass tourism: 'If you find a way to have tourists in Venice that don't kill the city, we maybe find the method to save all the cities of the world.'
Observer
23-04-2025
- Observer
Venice doubles entry fee for day-trippers
Starting last Friday, visitors to Venice once again were required to pay an entry fee of up to €10 (£8.75) for a day's visit, marking a significant increase from the €5 (£4.37) charge implemented last year when the scheme was first introduced. Originally brought into effect in 2024, this initiative, known as the 'Access Fee,' aims to manage the overwhelming number of tourists flocking to the Italian lagoon city. Visitors planning to arrive within three days will face a doubled fee of €10, as confirmed by the municipality on its official website. 'Our goal is to encourage quality tourism — overnight stays — that respects the city and seeks to engage with it on a deeper level, embracing its unique character and rhythm,' remarked Simone Venturini, Venice's councillor for tourism. Despite last year's experiment not significantly reducing visitor numbers, it did generate approximately €2.5 million (£2.2 million) for the city, indicating a potential benefit amidst the persistent issue of overcrowding. Notably, tourists booking accommodations for one night or longer will be exempt from the entry fee. Similarly, local residents, workers, and students are also not required to pay, thus alleviating the burden on those who contribute to the city's fabric. Venice, renowned for its picturesque canals, welcomes about 30 million tourists each year, with around 70% opting for day trips. To address this surge, the fee will be applicable on 54 specific days throughout 2025, including all weekends from Friday to Sunday until the end of July, and up until the first weekend in May. Visitors must secure a QR code online prior to their arrival and present it on their mobile devices. Those failing to obtain the necessary entry ticket risk facing a fine of up to €300 (£261). The entry fee system remains largely unchanged since last year; however, the frequency of payments and the increased rate indicate Venice's ongoing commitment to managing its visitor influx while promoting a more sustainable tourism model.
