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The writer is author of ‘Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves’
No one goes to Venice for the crowds. Yet whether you go for the gelato or the Tintorettos, the crowds will be there with you at every turn, swarming through the narrow streets, lining up for selfies in front of the lagoon, squeezing into water taxis and queueing interminably for a pizza at St Mark’s Basilica.
Venice currently receives about 30mn visitors a year, 40,000 a day — and it’s a city with only 49,000 inhabitants. The damaging wear and tear of overtourism almost put it on Unesco’s Heritage in Danger list. Now, the city’s mayor has instigated a controversial ticketing system, charging day visitors €5 entry at peak times and seasons. The cost of implementation, with 200 stewards prowling entry points, is likely to outweigh any financial gain — but this is an experiment in crowd regulation. And others are taking note.
Venice’s mayor wants to encourage tourists to stay the night, to linger and spend some real money. It’s the in-and-out day trippers who put pressure on the basic infrastructure without contributing to the city’s living expenses. The idea is that crowd control may also encourage the residents of Venice (down in number by two-thirds since the 1950s) to stay put — to ensure it is more than a museum emptied of life and work beyond servicing tourists, with more Airbnbs than homes and more strangers than neighbours.
Amsterdam, another medieval city of cobbles and canals, gets up to 20mn visitors annually. It has been charging a tourists’ tax since 2020, an extra €3 a night to stay in addition to the 12.5 per cent per room charge (10 per cent for an Airbnb). Now, Amsterdam is looking to further manage the daily flow by charging day-tripping cruise passengers €14 per day, up from the €8 fee they previously had to pay.
But will such modest entry charges really deter visitors? Implementing this kind of scheme is cumbersome. Many tourists in Venice were unaware that they had to register as overnight visitors to avoid being intercepted by one of the roaming inspectors and fined up to €300. The locals haven’t wholeheartedly welcomed the new policy either. It has added another layer of confusing bureaucracy to the already stressful business of going about ordinary life during the high season.
The challenge of balancing incoming crowds and the needs of year-round residents is shared even by destinations with more modest cultural attractions. In the UK, the seaside town of Margate is a magnet for day excursionists. Tourism there, together with that in nearby Broadstairs and Ramsgate, brings £212mn to the local economy. But thousands of day tourists bring litter and put pressure on facilities and sanitation, potentially deterring the long-stay holidaymakers who bring real economic value. Thanet district council considered imposing a tourist tax on day visitors but in the end decided it did not have the requisite powers to implement the levy.
Tourism has always had a built-in problem with other people: the crowds spoil the view. Most visitors think of themselves as discriminating, alive to culture and experience — it’s the next-door group with selfie sticks who don’t get it.
As Evelyn Waugh noted of a 1930s cruise experience: “the tourist is the other fellow”. But the truth is, the tourist is not “the other fellow”. The tourist is all of us, in increasing numbers and with the world’s extraordinary places more accessible to us than ever before. It is a central paradox of tourism that mass visitation preserves and destroys in equal measure.
If we are to continue to enjoy the world’s wonders and keep them intact in both fabric and atmosphere, we should expect to pay more for the privilege.
