‘It would burst’: Grave fears for the future of Venice, Italy as tourist numbers explode

Locals are at their wits’ end when it comes to a huge problem facing this famous city and they fear it could see the end of it.

As Kumi Taguchi watched a young local boy kick around a football marked with the Italian flag on her trip to Venice, she wondered what would happen to him and whether he would have a future in his famous city.

“I definitely felt the city was absolutely at a tipping point, where it’s tipped over to like, will it be able to come back to a place kids can grow up and normal life can happen?” she told news.com.au.

The SBS Insight host travelled to the hugely popular Italian city of Venice with Dateline to investigate the impact of mass tourism, which locals fear is killing “The Floating City”.

Holiday hotspots across the world are looking desperately for new ways to cope with a massive boom in tourism post-Covid.

In Venice, it is widely acknowledged there is a major problem, however, how to deal with it is a highly contentious matter.

Kumi Taguchi travelled to Venice with SBS’s Dateline to investigate the issue of mass tourism. The episode airs on August 13. Picture: SBS

Taguchi said she felt a “sadness for the city” as she moved through crammed alleyways, packed will tourists rushing through for the day.

“The figure that really bothers me a lot is that global tourism is set to double by 2050 and that’s not really long away,” she said.

“I just imagined Venice in 2050 and thought it would burst in summer. It would not cope.”

Venice’s economy relies heavily on tourism but with tourists outnumbering residents 100 to one it creates major problems for those who live there.

Fifth generation Venetian Ruggero Tallon, who is an activist and schoolteacher, told Taguchi there is a lack of services and job opportunities for younger people.

“The more money this tourism brings, the more dependent we are just on that … How can you earn a living outside tourism? What if you want to be a pharmacist, or a carpenter, or a fisherman?” Mr Tallon said.

The other issue is housing, with landlords making more money through short-term rentals for tourists.

Taguchi met with a Venetian mum who had been looking for a rental property for more than a year.

Tourists queue to buy entry tickets into Venice in April this year, when it was introduced for the first time. Picture: Marco Bertorello / AFP

For the first time this year, Venice introduced an $8 entry fee for day trippers during the peak season.

Mr Tallon said it is a “terrible idea” to treat the city like an amusement park, and believes the city must think about the citizens rather than the tourists.

But if you ask Venice’s deputy mayor Simone Venturini, the entry fee is such a great initiative the council is already considering a higher fee and longer period for next year.

“We could even raise it to the maximum we can apply, which is 10 euros,” Mr Venturini told Taguchi.

As for protesters taking to the streets – like Mr Tallon’s “No grandi navi” group – he claims they are a small, angry minority who “just like to play the part of the dying community” because it makes a good news headline.

He is right when it comes to the protesters being angry, with Mr Tallon passionately explaining: “If I see my city dying, I’ll raise hell”.

Taguchi said she expected hostility with finds like this, but most Venetians were angrier about the management of tourism in the city rather than at the tourists themselves. Picture: SBS

Taguchi was visiting Venice for the first time and braced for hostility, but while there was the odd “tourists go home” graffiti, she said most people seemed to have an issue not with tourists but the way tourism is being managed.

“I felt a neutrality towards me as a tourist,” she said.

“When I go to places I love the interaction with people, so ‘Oh, gosh that meal was amazing’ and ‘I love your shop, how long have you had it?’ and ‘How long have you been here?’ – all those lovely discussions you have with locals.

“I found it a real struggle to have any proper interactions with anyone.”

She felt like “a cog in a machine” given the Venetians working were dealing with such huge numbers of tourists.

Many locals like those who take people on gondoliers would not have work if it wasn’t for tourists. Picture: Marco Bertorello / AFP

The issue of mass tourism was much more complex than Taguchi imagined going into the investigation, mostly because of the city’s strong reliance on the very thing blamed for destroying it.

“It’s not one of those things where you can go ‘let’s just not have any tourists’ because so many people would have no jobs,” she said.

“Wonderful Venetian traditions like glass blowing and gondoliers would die because the majority of people interested in those traditions particularly are tourists.”

Taguchi pondered if perhaps some of the scores of tourist shops were instead more normal every day shops, the way tourists interacted with the city could shift from surface level curiosity.

However, Venice is somewhat stuck in a “vicious cycle” as working in tourism is one of the main ways Venetians can make money and stay living in the city.

Tourists pass souvenir stalls in San Marco, the tourist heart of Venice. Picture: Andrea Merola/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“I have wondered whether there might be some cities around the world that go ‘look for a generation or a decade, there’s going to be a financial loss from this industry that we’ve relied on for so long, but the long-term gain if you project forward 30 or 40 years will be families living here, a city that is still at the heart of it, a community,’” Taguchi said.

“Maybe sometimes I think there is going to have to be short term sacrifices for a lot of these places.”

She said Kyoto in Japan was a good example of a city which appeared willing to take a hit financially to create more sustainable tourism.

Taguchi hopes Australian tourists will reconsider how they travel to Venice, including visiting off-peak and staying longer rather than just rushing through for the day.

Venice relies heavily on tourism, the very thing that locals fear is killing it. Picture: SBS

Aussies are already travelling to Europe more in shoulder seasons to escape the worst of the heat and crowds.

There were 58 per cent more flights to Europe booked through Webjet for May and June this year – what is considered the shoulder season – in the six months prior, compared to the peak season in July and August, exclusive data obtained by news.com.au from the online travel giant showed.

Speaking with news.com.au last season about the record-breaking heat, Intrepid Travel CEO James Thornton predicted within the next five to 10 years Aussies will be choosing to jet off to Europe for Easter and September school holidays instead of the wildly popular July and August months.

Last year, Italy had the most Australian visitors since records began with 311,760 Aussies visiting the country – 19 per cent more than pre-pandemic in 2019, the Italian National Tourist Board reported.

Dateline’s episode ‘Venice’s Tourist Overload’ airs on August 13 at 9.30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand, as part of the show’s 40th season.