‘I’m happy to pay to visit Venice’, says first person to use new ticket system

Sylvain Pellarin, the first person to pay the entrance fee, said he was happy to hand over five euros if it is used to protect Venice

Emerging from Venice’s railway station on a dank, rainy morning, Sylvain Pellarin became the first person in the world to pay a five euro fee to enter the World Heritage city in a controversial initiative that has sharply divided opinion in the lagoon city.

The project has been launched after years of debate and will be closely watched by destinations around the world that are being smothered by overtourism.

For his part, Mr Pellarin said he was happy to hand over five euros at a brand new ticket office just outside the station, a few yards from the Grand Canal.

“I have been coming to Venice since I was a child and I have seen mass tourism intensify,” said the quality controller from Orleans.

“I’m fine with paying it if the money is used well to protect Venice. I think it’s right that you have to pay to see a place like Venice,” said Mr Pellarin, 55.

Tourists will have to pay €5 to enter Venice on 29 specific days this year – MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP

Just to his right, Mark Michanowicz became the first tourist in the world to use a new electronic booking system to pay his entrance fee. “I think it’s the right thing to do. The Venetians have suffered long enough from overtourism. As a tourist you come, you eat, you go. Who’s going to clear up all the mess? I’d be willing to pay ten euros. If you’re going to visit a beautiful city why not support it?” said Mr Michanowicz, 64, who served with an airborne unit in the US army and spent time stationed in northern Italy.

‘We could have spent the money on a gelato’

“We were meant to have come to Venice yesterday and wouldn’t have had to pay, so that’s a bit of a bummer,” said Luca Perotti, 22, a kitchen and bathroom designer from London. “We could have spent the money on a gelato or something.

“But I guess in the grand scheme of things, five euros is not so bad. Although it doesn’t seem to have reduced the number of tourists. The place is rammed,” added Mr Perotti, who was on a day trip from Verona with his girlfriend Kodie Jamieson, a 26-year-old pharmacy dispenser.

City officials in white bibs conducted random checks on tourists arriving at the station to check whether they had a QR code on their phones that proves they paid the entrance fee.

Any visitor who is not staying the night must pay a €5 (£4.29) entry fee online before entering the city on April 25, which is an Italian national holiday and the first of 29 days this year when visitors are being charged to get in.

Although there are no turnstiles at the city gateways, inspectors will be making random checks and issue fines of between €50 and €300 (between £43 and £257) to anyone who has failed to register.

“No one has ever done this before,” Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor of Venice, told reporters ahead of the experimental measures being introduced. “We are not closing the city… we are just trying to make it liveable.”

Some 20 million people visited Venice last year, a city official said, with about half of them staying overnight in hotels or holiday lets – dwarfing the city’s population of 49,000.

Venice narrowly escaped being placed on Unesco’s “World Heritage in Danger” list last year partly because the city was addressing concerns that its ecosystem risked being overwhelmed by tourism.

As well as introducing the entry charge, the city has also banned large cruise ships and announced limits on the size of tourist groups.

Simone Venturini, the council official responsible for tourism and social cohesion, said: “The phenomenon of mass tourism poses a challenge for all Europe’s tourist cities.

“But being smaller and more fragile, [Venice] is even more impacted by this phenomenon and is therefore taking action earlier than others to try to find solutions.”

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