Perche

I've really never seen so much talk and so many demonstrations about the tourism in Venice,as in the last few months. Another headline today. A few years ago, Venice passed a tourist tax. You had to pay I think 4 euros per night when you stayed at a hotel, for the first 7 nights. The thinking was that would dissuade some tourism, or at least bring in some money to offset the damage that they do (of course, AirBnb's don't pay that tax, so the city doesn't get anything.

http://www.veneziatoday.it/?refresh_ce

The headline today is, "Il sindaco Brugnaro contro il turismo mordi e fuggi: "Se stai un giorno solo devi pagare di più." Mayor Brugnaro against the tourists who bite and run: "If you are here for only one day, you have to pay more."

VeneziaToday - cronaca e notizie da Venezia
„Il primo cittadino su La Stampa torna a chiedere al premier Renzi un patto per lo sviluppo della città: "Facciamo pagare un obolo inversamente proporzionale al tempo di permanenza"“

Translating, the article goes on to say. "The mayor just came back from meeting with Prime Minister Renzi to develop a pact for the city, a tax that's inversely proportional to the length of stay.

Without tourists, Venice will die. The city is open to all, and we will never forbid it to anyone. But bite and run tourists (meaning day trippers and cruise shippers) are not of much benefit to the city, and cost the city a lot. It has to be regulated. The current daily tax does not come close to financing the services utilized by tourists.

I'm thinking of a payment inversely proportional to the length of their stay. Those who come and leave in one day pay the most. Every additional day of reservation reduces the payment.

That was the interview of Mayor Brugnaro in La Stampa. The tax would also apply to cruise ships. They would have to apply online while on the boat and debit their ticket when they use the vaporetti, boats, trains, land services.

Mass tourism is not an emergency - anything but, says Brugnaro, whose recipe is to develop other sectors, not kill the tourism that feeds us, when the refrigerator is empty, first thing of filling it up, then you can eat well. If you eliminate tourism the refrigerator will empty, and the people won't eat anymore. declared the mayor, who proposed his recipe: first develop industry. Everything depends on the port (remember, Venice is not just the tourist islands, but also on the mainland, Mestre, Marghera, and other towns). We just lost a ship that wanted to bring in 6,000 containers. It didn't go to Geneva or Trieste, but to Capodistria. The world is going to economies of scale. Ship owners get bigger ships, and our ports cannot accommodate them.

Then I said to Renzi, let's make a pact for Venice. In 2002 we accepted the Moses Project (gates under water in the lagoon that can rise up out of the water when needed to prevent flooding) in exchange for not developing the port. And still, we have seen nothing. We have to make a new port offshore for ocean going shipping. The chinese are ready to invest 600 million euros in this, but they want certainty. The pact also includes a new channel for cruise ships, and the Marghera port."

So that's the news about it today. If you get off of a cruise ship for a day in the city, you have to reserve and pay a stiff fee before you leave the boat, to account for the damage this does to the city. And of course, a tax for nights spent in the city, which would mean having to reign in AirBnb, because they are "in the black," or off the books.

PWMTrav

I immediately started to wonder if this would be permissible. Can Italy really tax its own citizens' visits to a city within Italy that aren't tied directly to some product or service? I could see a tax on the services you mentioned, but it might be hard to levy a tax for merely setting foot beyond a certain public boundary. If it applies to foreigners only, that's basically a visa, and would be unheard of at the city level. I could certainly see a large tax on the first use of something (show the receipt to waive the tax for the next 30 days or whatever), but that wouldn't do much for the day trippers that truly aren't consuming any public services.

Again, I think it'd be good for the city to limit day trippers if they aren't an economic net gain (including the costs of wear and tear on infrastructure). Taxing cruise ships more heavily seems to be one way. I'm not sure how I'd get at the rest, though, and especially not Italian citizens.

I'm wondering about Airbnb. In my two Airbnb stays that I've had in Italy so far, I've had to pay the nightly tassa di soggiorno (in Rome and Florence). I assume someone's paying VAT along the way, maybe I'm wrong there. It doesn't seem to be off the books from my stays.

Perche

He didn't make it clear how it was going to work in that article, but the article I linked was part of a much larger article covering additional topics in the national paper La Stampa. What it seems is that before getting off of a cruise ship, you'd have to put money into an account online. Then when you use a service like a vaporetto, or train, it will debit from that account. When you stay in a hotel right now, you pay a 3 euro per night tax for the first seven days. What he is proposing is that if you have only a one night stay, the tax might be 8 euros.

I'm sure Italian citizens will be exempt in some way. For example, the hotel tax is not 3 euros for citizens. For vaporetto, as a citizen, I get to cut ahead of non-citizens in the line, and I pay 1.5 euros. Non-citizens have to get on a longer line, board after italian citizens, and pay 7.5 euros. So there is precedent for making tourists pay more.

The vast majority of AirBnb's don't register with local authorities, even in the USA. The landlord at your AirBnb may have collected the 3 euro per day tax, but it's not likely to have gone anywhere, but into their pocket, at least till very recently. Florence recently struck a deal with AirBnb, because none of them were handing in the tax they were collecting. They worked out some type of arrangement that the government would stop trying to close them down as illegal, if they assure them that the "tax" they collect from tourists actually goes to the government. In a recent article the mayor of florence touted this as a success, because so far, AirBnb's have turned over 2 million euros, whereas before, the "tax" was something AirBnb hosts used as a bogus rip off of tourists.

It's called tassa de soggiorno, or trip tax. If you google the Florence AirBnb community Forum, AirBnb'rs are right now discussing whether they should really hand over the money. They said that they just received an email from AirBnb in March, telling them to remember to hand over the tassa di soggiorno, and they people on the board are discussing whether or not they really have to no. It's completely unregulated.
For example, the last post from someone who rents their place out as an AirBnB says, "Ciao! In data 10 marzo ho ricevuto da Airbnb una email riguardante la nota informativa del Comune di Firenze in materia di tassa di soggiorno. Volevo chiedere agli altri ospiti fiorentini come stanno gestendo la cosa. Non mi è chiaro se, essendo stato fatto l'accordo tra Airbnb e il Comune di Firenze, si già obbligatorio farla pagare o meno." Meaning, Ciao, on March 10th I received an email from AirBnb regarding a note from the city of Florence about the tax for staying at a place overnight. I would like to know how other AirBnb hosts are managing that. It's not clear to me that this agreement between AirBnb and the city of Florence makes it obligatory to pay it or not."

Here is a link to an article in the Florence paper, mentioning the agreement between the city and AirBnb. It says that AirBnb is pulling in 100 of millions of dollars from Florence, and if AirBnb renters actually collect and hand over the tax in accordance with the agreement, it will add 10's of millions to the cities funds. A lot more than 2 million. http://firenze.repubblica.it/cronaca...rno-132092514/

PWMTrav

Rome and Florence are all I've booked, so I can't speak to Venice. However, in Rome, residents are exempt but not Italian citizens in general:

"Chi non deve pagarla? Chi è residente a Roma, i bambini fino ai 10 anni, chi accompagna i pazienti per motivi di salute, il personale della Polizia di Stato e delle altre forze armate e un autista di pullman ed un accompagnatore turistico ogni 23 partecipanti."

http://www.comune.roma.it/pcr/it/dip...soggiorno.page

In any case, charging more for the first night is a good idea, but won't matter for day trippers.

Florence is similar. If I'm reading their reg correctly, it applies to all tourism uses (with some minor exceptions for kids, students, caretakers for hospital stays and such, so even a resident would pay if the use was tourism.

I'm pretty sure I've received a ricevuta fiscale for both, so if they're not remitting it, that's definitely an enforcement issue. I'm fine paying that tax and having these folks regulated as a business.

rickg523

Data point - I've stayed in STR's in Rome, Sorrento, Venice, and Perugia. Airbnb in Rome, VRBO/HomeAway in Perugia, and local services in Sorrento and Venice.
In every case, I've paid tax. In every case, the tax was itemized separately and was demanded as a cash payment at the start of the rental, never included in the escrowed prepayment.
I have long felt this invited pocketing rather than properly remitting this money. Apparently, that's the case.
This ought to make a strong case for municipalities allying with the listing services instead of going adversarial from the get-go.
The STR listing services, because they are in a far better position to achieve enforcement. (Don't pay the tax, lose the right to list here). In fact, starting from a place where trying to solve a problem rather than starting by trying to assign blame for the problem would go a long way toward a workable solution. Frankly, the collecting and remittance of taxes ought to be simple as pie.

Perche

We very often look at life around the world through the lens of the USA, as if San Francisco, Santa Monica, New York, has any relevance to how people in Venice see the world. One of the benefits of non-touristy travel is to expand that lens.

I posted about it when Florence passed its law forbidding the opening of any ethnic food restaurants in the city center, and the requirement that restaurants buy 80% of their food from surrounding farms in Tuscany.

Most of the responses were upset about it, but I kind of tempered that by saying that I can see where the citizens of Florence were coming from. Food and heritage there are the backbone of their life, and are seen from a different lens.

Now comes another insight on that. In the USA, the law is pretty clear that you can set up a website and allow people to post whatever they want on it, and you are not responsible for it. If you start editing the posts, then you become responsible.

I think it's called the graffiti rule. The owner of a building cannot be responsible for the graffiti that people write on it. In Europe, it is different. Seeing things from the lens of the USA will not lead to understanding of Venetians, as evidenced today by what has happened to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook today, in Germany.

Germany doesn't have the graffiti rule. If you host a website and someone posts illegal hateful speech, holocaust denial, Nazi speech, immigrant bashing, you cannot defend yourself by claiming, "Hey, I'm just the host of this website. I'm not responsible for what people do on it!"

Zuckerberg and Facebook are in trouble in Germany for not deleting posts about things that are against the law. In the USA, that would not happen but in Germany, people have a different perspective. Zuckerberg and Facebook leaders are now under heat, and being investigated.

It's not much different from the way Google had to change their rules to be able to operate in China. They were booted out of China, unless China allowed them to be censored, and they agreed. Microsoft was fined almost a billion for violating EU antitrust laws that don't exist in the USA. Different countries have different expectations. Each country is sovereign, and can make rules to defend their own interests.

http://www.thelocal.de/20161104/muni...oss-zuckerberg

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...ure-to-remove/

If AirBnb is allowing landlords to illegally rent apartments, and italians are angry this, it may seem ludicrous from a USA perspective, but not from the perspective of venetians or Italy. The way people in Italy feel about AirBnb and its effect on apartment vacancies, evictions, loss of neighborhood services, has a perspective that cannot be understood from a USA lens, just like what is happening with Facebook, something that Facebook, and before them, Google, and Microsoft could never have imagined.

PWMTrav

And yet focusing the blame and enforcement on Airbnb instead of the root causes will just ensure that these things continue to happen. It's clear that owners want to rent short term and that visitors want to rent short term. The appropriate response, regardless of lens or perspective, is to implement a regulatory scheme that allows short term rentals to happen safely and above board. Throwing it all at Airbnb just means another site will replace it.

And FWIW, what you're outlining isn't uniquely an Italian or a Venetian perspective. You'd hear the same thing in Portland, Seattle or the Bay Area. It's a problem that won't be solved by blaming a website.

Perche

I think that everyone on this discussion has converged into agreement that there is a need for regulations to moderate the effect that STR's have on a city. It's not about blaming a specific website. It could be AirBnb, it could be VRBO, or any of the other websites that are destroying neighborhoods and pushing out people.

By sheer coincidence, I was just sitting in San Francisco and opened the newspaper (San Francisco Examiner) to read the news. The headline is, "SF still struggling to enforce short-term rentals." What a coincidence! Below the headline there is a picture of a woman participating in a demonstration carrying a sign that says, "Will your landlord evict for AirBnb?"

just google San Francisco Examiner, and that title.

Excerpts, the first paragraph starts out, "As San Francisco awaits a federal court ruling on tougher regulations for short-term rentals, The City continues to struggle with enforcement to curtail illegal activity."

"San Francisco has remained in a sustained debate over short-term rentals and the best way to regulate the practice as critics argue precious housing units are being kept off the market for short-term rentals by those who are violating the regulations, which includes having to register with The City."

“Airbnb claims it has half the market in San Francisco and more than 7,000 hosts in San Francisco. That means there’s 12,000 or 14,000 people running around doing short-term rentals and we haven’t registered more than 15 percent of them.”

"Concerned about enforcement, the Board of Supervisors in June approved legislation that requires short-term rental companies list on their websites only legal housing listings or face fines of up to $1,000 per day."

“Trying to manage this whole situation from a city’s perspective is definitely challenging without the cooperation of these hosting platforms,”

In other words, it's not just the free market at work in Venice. STR's can be a destructive force. I started this thread by noting that Venice seems to be getting more serious about the effects that unbridled tourism is having on the city, as did Cinque Terre.

Then, AirBnb came up, and I pointed out that people who rely on them should not announce it in Venice, because it as unpopular as saying you arrived on a cruise ship.

I'm not going to criticize people for not knowing the effects that their traveling decisions have on a city, but I hope this thread helped make people aware of some of those effects. People who arrive to Venice on a cruise ship almost certainly don't know the damage that is caused to the very foundations of the city, and why Venetians voted to ban them, only to be overturned by the courts. Not too long ago, just about every citizen who has a boat, which is a lot of people in Venice, did a demonstration by rowing, paddling, or motoring out to where a cruise ship was docked, and they surrounded it so that they couldn't move without plowing over boats and killing people. Venetians hate cruise ships.

They are just as irate at people who use AirBnb, VRBO, or any other STR website. It would be in everyone's interest if there were regulations, and if they were forced to operate legally, or face penalties. Right now, that is not the case, even in San Francisco, much less in Italy. In Italy it's, "a nero," or "under the table."

On the bulletin board for STR's in Venice there was just this post from someone offering a week in an apartment on AirBnb, ""960 euro a nero."

Perche

In the New York Times just today, showing this is not about "moneyed interests," like hotels fighting the underdog AirBnb:

"The company, which was founded in San Francisco in 2008, is now the world’s largest home-sharing site, worth some $30 billion. It is also engaged in multiple legal battles around the world in cities that restrict short-term rentals. Affordable housing advocates say it is responsible for driving housing costs up by taking full-time rentals off the market, in effect turning them into illegal hotel rooms. And just last month, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York signed a bill imposing stiff fines on hosts who violate local housing regulations; the company immediately reacted by filing a lawsuit in federal court."

Perche

On another note, just down the block from the Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal is a very famous Venetian building. It's one of the city's named buildings, like Ca Rezzonico, Ca D'Oro. It is called Fondaco Dei Tedesch, because it used to be the German Embassy around the time of Napolean.

It has been under reconstruction for some years now, without many people really knowing what was to become of it. It is finally reopening tomorrow - as a duty free shopping mall!

I don't know if this is good or bad, but based on the brands that will be selling there I doubt that many Venetians will be customers. I'll be interested in finding out when I go back next week.

https://www.dfs.com/en/t-fondaco-dei...s/venice-store

Perche

Also, interesting that the "Sharing Economy" is now moving to food in a big way. There are some websites like Gnammo and a few others, where you can arrange to eat in someone's house in Italy by joining them for dinner, instead of going to a restaurant. That has been around for a while, and has been a pretty good thing.

Now, there is a game changer called "EatWith." It is a game changer because TripAdvisor just bought them, so that they can spread it to cities around the world. There will be major place on the TripAdvisor website for people to rate the food of the house they just ate at. The headline is, "TripAdvisor Opens Social Eating to Develop the AirBnb of food."

http://www.dissapore.com/notizie/tri...-bnb-del-cibo/

Each of the following sentences is an excerpt from the article, translated.

Do you want to eat at the house of a retired person?
Maybe you want to eat arancini made by the head of the household in Palermo?
Then your dreams will be realized, thanks to TripAdvisor.
This is an innovative service, due to an agreement between TripAdvisor and EatWith, a start up that wants to develop itself into the AirBnB of food.
As the website expands you will be able to look at the online profile of the cook, and the menu they propose, and make an online reservation. Prices will range from 30 to 100 dollars per person.
This is a way to meet creative people with open minds.
The main criticism is that you plan on it and not enough people make a reservation, and the home chef decides that there isn't enough critical mass to make it worth their while to cook, and they cancel you at the last minute.
TripAdvisor's response to this criticism is to make this service so popular that there will always be a critical mass of people wanting to eat at every house, so that everyone can enjoy the warmth that only a family can provide.
Thanks to a simple online website that allows people to make reviews.

I don't know if this is good or bad. Is it like AirBnb, a way for people to turn their homes into illegal restaurants? EatWith is calling itself, "The Future of Dining," and is actively soliciting hosts in Italy to open their home to cook for people.

https://www.eatwith.com/offering/12487/?eventId=33113

PWMTrav

Exactly where I was headed. The root causes are the same, whether it's Airbnb, another site, or regular old classified ads. The only thing I can really say about sites like Airbnb and VRBO is that they've removed almost all of the friction from the short term rental process. That, in essence, is making it easier to do what people have already decided they want to do.

I'm down for taxes, passed on to me as the renter and all. Regulations help my family be safe in a short term rental. I just have a bad feeling that local governments would find it easier to go after the symptoms, as it's a lot easier to tell people "It's Airbnb's fault" than it is to explain it as a market issue.

Perche

With AirBnb and similar sites, the numerous Bed and Breakfasts in Venice have been taking a pounding. B&B owners actually live at the place they are renting.

Venice just hit an alarm bell. There is a store that has an electric sign in the window that displays the number of residents. It was a crisis 2-3 years ago when it dropped below 60,000 citizens. This week it dropped below 55,000.

People have been comparing Venice with Disneyland, because the area around San Marco and Rialto Bridge mainly just sells cheap souvenirs. Now, they are starting to refer to Venice as Pompeii, a dead city.

A new service has just been launched to help B&B's. I have no experience with it, but people should be aware of it. Owning an apartment in Venice, which I did for a couple of years, is an expensive headache. Everything is so old, and the sea environment is so destructive, that apartments require constant maintenance.

The new website is a bartering service that allows you to stay at a B&B in Venice for free in exchange for helping them. Since Venice is all about water, plumbers are the main need. Someone with plumbing skills can easily stay in Venice right now for free.

It's called Baratto BB, which means bartering for bed and breakfast. http://www.barattobb.it/citta.cfm?ci...a&IDRegione=20.

I know that there is a way to see this website in English, but I can't find it right now. It may be enticing for a certain sector of travelers. Plumbers are golden. Some places will even give you room and board if you bring certain native foods from your country that are hard to get in Italy, or even if you can just help them repaint a room.

For example, probably the best place to stay in Venice is in the Castello, Arsenale area. A B&B there has posted, "LAVORI DI IDRAULICA DA PERSONA SPECIALIZZATA." In other words, you can stay here for free if you help us with plumbing. http://www.barattobb.it/pagina.cfm?id=1680&idregione=20

I know that this is a niche thing. I'm not talking to the crowd who is staying at Danieli or Gritti, but people do inquire about how to stay in Venice on a budget.

Here is another property in a great neighborhood, where you can stay for free if you can help them paint a room, or help them lay floors. It's run by an older woman who can't do it herself, and who doesn't want to pay cash to have it done. She'd rather barter, letting you stay at her place. http://www.barattobb.it/citta.cfm?ci...a&IDRegione=20

A lot of these B&B's are owned by older people who don't want to go the AirBnb route and ruin the neighborhood with "invasive tourism." They are trying to hold onto their place, and are willing to barter lodging for maintenance work.

If someone does this, be careful to not mix up Venice with Marghera, Mestre, or Lido, unless that's where you really want to be. Those areas are technically a part of Venice, but are on the mainland.

The Baratto BB service exists all around Italy. For example, you could trade your carpentry skills to stay at this very nice B&B near the vatican. http://www.barattobb.it/pagina.cfm?id=450&idregione=7

PWMTrav

That's awesome. I'm going to take a look at that for my next trip to Venice. Beyond the obvious, it's also an opportunity to make a new friend.

mkjr

the sad thing is that the users of airbnb see nothing wrong with its use in cases where it is illegal and look at those that don't use it as stupid suckers...