Venice’s on-again off-again plan to tax and limit day-trip visitors to the city is off again, only weeks before its latest due date.
Venice’s town council has set a new date of January 16 for the system that will meter the number of non-overnight visitors in the city, and set limits on how many can visit at a time. The capacity limits will be monitored by hundreds of cameras and aggregated mobile-phone data, which has led some to compare it to Orwell’s novel 1984.
The fees, which will depend on volume, run between about $3 and $10 a day, and don’t apply to visitors who have booked overnight stays in the city. One large group it’s aimed at is cruise ship passengers, who the city believes contribute little to the city’s economy.
The number of cruise passengers may drop significantly, since as of last year, Italy has prohibited the huge ships docking directly in Venice, and some lines are choosing not to dock elsewhere in the lagoon.
