In the fourth part in our series on overtourism, we're taking a look at one of the destinations that has become synonymous with the issue: Venice. If you missed the previous articles, you can catch-up here.
If the war against overtourism is just heating up in Mallorca, authorities in Venice have long been trying to deal with the problem with various measures introduced in recent years.
In April this year, authorities ran a 29-day pilot scheme called the Venice Access Fee which saw day trippers to the city charged €5 per head in a bid to help the city’s 55-000 strong population cope with the annual 20 million visitors.
Although the charge proved to be controversial, nearly €2.5 million was raised from the 485,062 people who paid it and authorities are said to be planning to double it when they reintroduce it later this year.
More recently, in August this year new rules were imposed on the city’s tour guides, limiting the size of groups to 25 people while the use of loudspeakers has also been banned with fines of up to €500 levied on those who break it.
In addition, Venetian authorities have also targeted cruise ships, banning them from entering the city’s historic heart in 2021 and forcing them to use the nearby industrial port of Marghera instead.
However, with a lack of passenger facilities at the site and apparently no sign of a new cruise ship hub being built outside the Venetian lagoon, the solution remains unsatisfactory.
The measures were introduced to address complaints from local residents who were increasingly concerned that the numbers of tourists visiting the city were making day-to-day life impossible due to overcrowding and rising accommodation costs as former homes became holiday lets.
However, European Tourism Association (ETOA) chief executive Tom Jenkins argued that factors far greater than overtourism have impacted the local population since as far back as the nineteenth century, leading to regular shifts in both the type and numbers of people living there.
He said: “In general terms, Venice is a tourism city. Has tourism had an impact on the population? Of course it has, but it has been nothing like the economic and environmental concerns which have wreaked havoc on Venice in the 20th century.
“So the depopulation of Venice was not caused by tourism, it was caused by Venetians. On the whole they didn’t want to have a metre of raw sewage on their ground floors and they wanted to have a house with a car, a garden, access to a supermarket and, above all, access to jobs.”
Jenkins added this saw the start of tourism businesses taking off in the city and if residents are now finding themselves priced out of Venice, it is a problem being felt the world over.
He said: “It’s perfectly normal in a city, and particularly economically dynamic cities, that people can’t afford to live where their parents did.”
Jenkins added that while visiting cruise ships may drive up visitor numbers, their impact is more limited than people have claimed.
He said: “It’s interesting that the overcrowding caused by cruise ships docking in Venice is a by-product of people (from the ships) moving about by themselves.
“The overcrowding that occurs in Venice occurs really in 5 per cent of Venice which is the route between Piazzale Roma, the Rialto, the Rialto Bridge and San Marco and it undoubtedly gets packed between 12 and 3 in an afternoon in the summer.
“There’s no doubt it’s overcrowded but the rest of it is not overcrowded. The thing about overcrowding is this occurs in about 10 per cent of 1 per cent of the cities of Europe.”
But it is still happening and impacting the remaining residents, agreed Michael O’Regan, a lecturer in tourism and events at the Glasgow School for Business and Society in the Glasgow Caledonian University.
He added while cruise ship passengers might be an obvious target for local anger, simply banning them outright is not as easy, or as welcome, as it sounds.
O'Regan said: “They can try to limit the number of cruise ships or the size of them; the tool box is there but for many politicians it’s a difficult step because iy might lead to degrowth or job losses or local people missing out on rising incomes.”
He added cruise ships will also have contracts with local ports guaranteeing their visits which can’t be easily broken while moving ships to a nearby port and bussing in the passengers simply drives up traffic and pollution on the roads.
O’Regan said: “The Venetian authorities should have a long-term strategy as to maybe reducing the size of ships or capping the number of passengers. If airports can cap their passenger numbers then cruise terminals can do that too.”
However, Andy Harmer, the managing director for CLIA (Cruise Lines International Association) UK and Ireland argued that with the cruise industry accounting for about 1 per cent of the entire global tourism industry, it is being unfairly singled out in destinations such as Venice.
He said: “Cruise is clearly a very visible type of tourism; we have ships that are very visible so people can see ships and people can see arrivals that they can’t see in other forms of transport.
“We’re a very small part of tourism and a very small part of shipping.”
Harmer added cruise capacity is growing by about 3.5 per cent a year and this is naturally limited by the demands of ship building.
He also said that the lengthy planning involved in arranging cruise itineraries means destinations have plenty of warning as to when they will be busy.
Harmer said: “In terms of managed tourism we know where our ships are going to be in two or three year’s time.
“We know the day that they are arriving, we know the time that the ships are arriving and we know broadly how many guests will be on board and what kind of things they will do.
“We are very managed and responsible in a way that many other types of tourism aren’t.”
He added a manifesto on sustainable cruise tourism was signed in Menorca in 2023 while CLIA is working closely with the Global Sustainable Tourism Council on future projects in parts of Greece.
Harmer also argued that while a destination like Venice is always going to be popular with travellers no matter what their mode of transport is, the cruise industry has also opened up many lesser-known ports and given them new economic opportunities as a result.
And he said it is in the interests of every party involved to crack the problem, adding: “Cruise tourism is very managed tourism that is planned well in advance, not just to give our guests a great destination experience but also so the destinations we visit can flourish too.”