Tourism Battle

On this sunny June day, thousands of tourists mill around one of the world’s most famous squares, Venice’s Piazza San Marco. As tour groups from China to Portugal throng around the entrance of St. Mark’s Basilica, others shriek with laughter as pigeons alight on their outstretched arms.

A group of brightly dressed Indian tourists have kicked off their sandals and are relaxed on the steps surrounding the square. Next to them, a Dutch family unpacks an large picnic hamper. Similar scenes are repeated all around the piazza, which with its combination of magnificent views and shaded loggia, seems like the ideal spot for a break. But it’s exactly this type of behavior that the Venice city council is trying to stop.

The council has banned eating, sunbathing, lying down and camping in the piazza and its surrounding neighborhood, and has introduced guards of a sort, called "hostesses," to reprimand those who break the rules.

“The seven hostesses are there to promote the idea of respect,” said Venice’s Town Councilor for Tourism, Augusto Salvadori. “They explain to tourists that they can’t picnic in the square or bare their torsos, for example, and also remind them that they can’t just leave their rubbish on the ground.”

Salvadori said the introduction of the hostesses was a “positive initiative” which would restore “decorum and cleanliness” to the square. But at Piazza San Marco, the crackdown doesn’t seem that popular with the visitors.

“It’s ridiculous,” said American Courtney Walker, clutching a burger and fries. She’s just been shooed off the steps along with her friends for eating. “There’s nowhere in McDonald’s to eat, and the square is enormous.”

Her sentiments are also shared many Venetians, who say the hostesses don’t solve the bigger issue of how to deal with the more than 19.5 million tourists who flock to Venice each year.

Too many tourists?

“Instead of devising policies for tourism and planning for the future, the administration is banning the eating of sandwiches,” said Andrea Chiappa, the Vice-President of Venice’s Hoteliers Association, with a shake of his head.

After Rome, Venice is the most popular destination in Italy but the majority of visitors are day trippers who arrive with their water bottles and packed lunches in an effort to avoid Venice’s high prices.

"The day trippers cost much more in maintenance and cleaning than they bring to the city,” Chiappa said.

The tourists aren’t just proving costly, however, they are also causing Venetians to leave the city in every increasing numbers. In the past fifty years, the population has halved to 62,000. According to statisticians, if the trend isn’t reversed, the city could be a ghost town by 2030.

Residents struggle

“One of the problems is that everything revolves around the tourists,” complained local resident Sergio Malara. “It’s difficult to find the basics, such as a butcher shop or a fruit and vegetable store or a boot maker.” Instead, streets in the center are lined with shops selling ceramic masks and Venetian glass beads.

Another problem is getting around the city’s narrow pedestrian streets and bridges. Malara has just moved away from the center because with so many visitors streaming into Venice in the summer months, it was just too stressful to get to work.

And when one local moves out, it’s not that another moves in. Property prices are so high that few Venetians can afford to buy or rent in the center. This means vacant properties are let to tourists who happily fork out 100 euros a night for the luxury of a tiny room with an outside bathroom and resident mosquito population.

In an effort to keep residential housing from disappearing, the city council recently tightened up zoning regulations making it more difficult to open hotels. But unfortunately, a loophole in the provincial law means pensions and Bed and Breakfasts can sprout up without restraint. In the past few years, more than 700 have opened in Venice.

Cap on visitors

One proposition being tossed around to mitigate the tourist problem is the idea of limiting the number of visitors who can enter the city each day. According to hotelier Chiappa, however, the council needs to do more to even out the flow of tourists to Venice before even discussing such “drastic measures.”

“The tourist season runs from April to October, and in winter hotel occupancy falls to below 50 percent,” Chiappa said. He is critical that major events are held in June and September, and museum exhibitions tend to run over summer. “You can just as well go to a museum in winter,” he said.

As the sun starts setting, the tourists trickle out of the city and the Venetians descend into Venice’s squares to enjoy the balmy evening. But those drinking aperitivi and chatting on park benches are mostly grey-haired pensioners. Venice’s young families have long moved elsewhere.