I was lucky to visit Venice during the pandemic with few tourists around. But introverted me even sensed the crowd problem then, it must be hell during peak tourist season. But Venice is spectacular. Even a $100 entry would not stop most tourists. There would have to be a hard cap on how many people can visit and cruise ships and such should be discouraged.
"The fabulously beautiful planet of Bethselamin was so worried by
accumulative erosion cause by over ten billion visiting tourists per
year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the
amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from
your body weight when you leave; so every time you go to the
lavatory there, it is vitally important to get a receipt." - HHGTTG
Living in a tourist destination is a mixed experience. On the one hand
you have a beautiful city to enjoy. On the other hand you can't really
enjoy it for 6 to 9 months of the year because your neighbourhood is
over-run.
At a conference in Rome I met a Venetian who told me those cruise
ships are the bane of their lives. She wanted to move out for health
reasons, because the constant stinking miasma of marine diesel from
dozens of ships. They are also HUGE, like floating cities, that
literally darken the skyline. The tens of thousands of visitors
dropping litter and blocking the pavement to take selfies are just a
minor inconvenience.
I'd wager that Marghera's refinery saved Venice much more than tourism did, at least economically speaking. Also, are you talking about Venice proper (the island parts) or the City of Venice more widely (including Mestre and Marghera)?
> Also funny we never hear from the people who are making money from tourism?
I can speak for that. My grandpa was one of the kiosks owner in Piazza S. Marco. After his retirement my uncles inherited it.
My grandpa used to make a lot of money from tourists buying souvenirs. In the last 20 years sales dropped, nobody buys anything from them anymore, they are now trying to sell sweaters and hats and (of course) they can't seem to sell those either.
But still, my grandpa complains both when there's plenty of tourists and when there are none.
EDIT: I forgot to type where this was going: my grandpa is against this entry fee.
/EDIT
It would be interesting to know who actually makes money in Venice.
Just my two cents: if the only people happy in a city are those that make money from tourism then it's not a city, it's a theme park.
Souvenirs seem like really tough business, constantly changing trends and all that.
A branch of the family owns two restaurants in Venice and they are making money hand over fist. The quality of the food is completely average for Venice, but the locations are good, the menu is optimized for consistency and tourist tastes (north american, southeast asia/chineese and european primarily), and most importantly (according to them) they spend a ton of effort optimizing their presence on food review apps like tripadvisor.
Not sayings restaurants are easy, but they are making a shocking amount of money from selling very average food.
I live in a tourist destination, where a lot of the money is being siphoned off elsewhere in the state. The people making money off of it are fabulously rich and do not want to be heard from in discussions like this; they are heard from when a politician who took a bunch of money from them acts in ways that ignore the concerns of the people living in the city in favor of whatever makes the most money for the rich folks.
If you visit Venice and take a few tours and/or speak to locals you'll hear a lot more about how important tourism is. But there is a lot of thought put on the 'kind' of tourism they want and get.
Most probably the locals that remained are tied in to the business industry, and, as such, you'd expect that sort of discourse coming from them. But the majority that left (~175k down to ~50k, as a fellow HN-er said above) probably had a different opinion about that.
The middle ground is to encourage longer vacations, rather than cruise ships full of people who just hit the most popular destinations for a day and then leave for the next city. When tourists take longer trips they spread out to different places and don't all concentrate in one area.
You really can see everything worth seeing in Venice in a day or two. Like, Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague? Sure, spend a week, or more. Venice, not so much.
The cruise ships are large, but hardly "darken the skyline". They dock in the industrial part of the city, and you can't see them from most of the city.
They do now. Up until last year they docked at Tronchetto (https://www.google.com/maps/place/terminal+msc+venezia/@45.4...) traversing the Canale della Giudecca to get there (that big canal between the main island and the Giudecca island in the southern part).
