Perche

Yes, the cruise ships are killing Venice. There is a non-binding referendum again on banning cruise ships I think next month. Barcelona, NYC and many other places put severe restrictions on AirBnb because of the destructive effect it has on affordable housing and neighborhoods.

The UNESCO warning came out months ago, and Venice has promised changes in how cruise ships access Venice. They want to dredge another canal that will allow them to disembark passengers without the boats having to drive by San Marco. Environmentalists, however, don't want another canal because it would change the whole ecology of the lagoon by allowing more tidal water in and out. Venice has really taken the UNESCO warning seriously. There's a lot going on there to meet the deadline.

I wouldn't let this dissuade anyone from visiting (unless going on a cruise ship). It's still one of the most beautiful places in Italy, and in the world. The cruise ships are just turning the city center between San Marco and Rialto into a mosh pit. AirBnb forces out native residents who pay 600 euros per month for their apartment, so that the landlord can rent the apartment for $600 a night to tourists. Investing in real estate is fine if it were regulated, but in Venice its not. It's unbridled. Regulating cruise ships and airbnb are the two main factors identified as being necessary to save Venice, that they are working on.

In the meantime, Venice is easy to enjoy because all of the cruise ships and other day trippers remain stuck between Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Bridge. Other neighborhoods remain as beautiful, mysterious, authentic, and breathtaking as ever. And before 8:30 AM you can go on a run from Piazza San Marco to the Rialto Bridge, and back, and stop for coffee when you're done, and not bump into anybody except locals, and other runners.

I wouldn't change plans because of this. It seems as if Venice is finally dealing with it by regulating (not stopping) cruise ships and AirBnb, for the benefit of the locals, or at least I hope so.

rickg523

I think - I hope - that the two messages that comes through this thread for folks considering a visit to Venice are first, just don't think of Venice as the small San Marco/Rialto Bridge area. And second, try and stay for longer than three days.
Do those things and Venice will seduce you.

Perche

Venice recently proposed a number of measures to prevent UNESCO from stripping its world heritage status, as discussed here, and seems to be pretty focused on carrying them out. They banned any new hotels and b&b's from opening in Venice. They can't close down the ones that are already there and have contributed so much to the depopulation of the city, but they did ban any new ones from opening up. It's good, but a little too late. They should have stopped them a long time ago.

http://corrieredelveneto.corriere.it...39890495.shtml

Excerpts:
VENEZIA Stop dal Comune alla realizzazione di nuovi alberghi e b&b a Venezia. La Giunta ha approvato una proposta di delibera che vieta, in linea generale, di trasformare degli immobili in centro storico in strutture ricettive....

(The commune stopped opening of any new hotels or b&b in Venezia. It approved a proposal that forbids transforming a residence in the historic center into a tourist accommodation.)

"Lo scenario è abbastanza pesante - ha detto l’assessore all’ Urbanistica, Massimiliano De Martin -. In centro storico, tra strutture ricettive di vario tipo, ci sono 47.229 posti letto per 25.400 camere."

(The situation is already very heavy, with 47,229 beds in 25,400 rooms available for visitors to rent.)

Sono escluse le locazioni turistiche (come Airbnb), per le quali verrà studiato un provvedimento ad hoc, e, dal punto di vista geografico, il provvedimento non varrà per le isole, il Tronchetto e la Giudecca, dove le politiche comunali sono diverse.

(Tourist places like AirBnb will be studied by an ad hoc committee....the islands of Giudecca and Tronchetto are not included in the measure)

rickg523

Interesting article from yesterday's Telegraph (UK)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cr...-for-the-city/

Indicates a difference between residents and Venice officials over cruise ships. Here's the headline:

Venice authorities lament lack of cruise ships as residents and Unesco fight for the city's future

Edit - sorry about the font; don't know how to change it

Perche

It is an interesting article. I'm suspicious about its accuracy because it quotes Venetian officials. They are terribly corrupt. Think of the Moses Project. I think it was 1966 when there was such bad flooding that they passed a law requiring the Venetian lagoon to do something about it. It took them until about 1986 to come up with a plan, and that was the Moses Project, to be completed in 1996.

It consisted of submersible gates at the entrance of the lagoon that would be raised when needed to stop Aqua Alta. 30 years later it still hasn't happened. The cost overruns have been phenomenal. A few years ago they arrested 35 people, mostly local officials, including the Mayor. The project went on for decades with over a billion dollars of cost overruns because the Mayor and the rest of the government were Mafia.

A year or two ago I posted that people should go to Venice now, because they appointed 3 special counsels to take over the project and do it honestly, and they predicted that the Moses Gates would be up and running in 2016, and there would be no more Aqua Alta. Aqua Alta is one the best things to experience in Venice.

There's still Aqua Alta. In the 30 years of the project and the phenomenal cost of it, no one had thought of the fact that salt water is corrosive, and much of the project is already going to rot because the maintenance of keeping them working in the face of salt water is something like $750 million.

When you say that there seems to be a difference of opinion between the Venetian officials and its local citizens that's true. There isn't much trust in the government. The current Mayor doesn't even live in Venice.

Venetians scheduled another plebiscite for this month, like the last one a few years ago, to ban cruise ships, the one that that won by a vast majority. This one will vote to ban cruise ships too. It should be kept in mind that the docking, port fees, etc, don't go to Venice. The money goes to Rome. That's why Rome overruled the last Venetian plebiscite that overwhelmingly voted to ban cruise ships.

In addition to the plebiscite to ban cruise ships, Venice and the entire Veneto region, along with Milan and the entire region of Lombardy, have another upcoming plebiscite: to become autonomous from Italy. Just like 6 states currently are.

The reason is that Lombardy and the Veneto generate about 1/3 of Italy'a gross domestic product. It goes to Rome, and Rome sends back only a small part. Both states would prefer to be like Alto Adige, etc. and the other independent states, and only be loosely connected to Italy.

Venetians hate cruise ships and AirBnb, and people who buy take out food and eat it on the steps of the bridges over the canals, and on the steps of historic churches. There's no way around it. Florence has already taken stricter measures. They took steps to require AirBnb to pay hotel taxes so that they don't have that unfair price advantage. And instead of requiring the "owner" who is supposedly collecting the tax and going to city hall to pay it, they required a modification of the website to require taxes to be paid directly to the government, because owners were collecting it, but not paying it.

Florence already banned the opening of new fast food places in the center. I'm glad that Venetians are following suit. If Florentine churches are experimenting with using water canons to spray the church steps so that tourists don't mistake their sacred sites as their living room couch, I don't see why that would be a problem.

Perche

Headline from just a few years ao.
Venice Mayor Arrested on Corruption Charges
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/05/w...n-charges.html

The head of the industrial consortium directing the project was also arrested. The Former Minister of Culture was arrested too, along with 32 other people, but was able to get out of it because he was in the Parliament, and members of the government cannot be arrested in Italy.

"a difference between residents and Venice officials over cruise ships," is only natural. Stick with the residents.

The project that was supposed to be finished in 1995 has cost over $6 billion dollars so far, yet the gates to block water from coming into the lagoon caused deep water pits that made aqua alta more severe. The billions of dollars (and counting) was taken out of the money that Venice sends to Rome, where Rome takes its cut, and sends some slice back to Venice. The corrupt Moses project siphoned off much of Venice's revenue. Students were told to bring their own toilet paper to school to save money, the canals couldn't be regularly dredged, and senior citizens who needed help because they can't walk across all of the bridges had their services cut and had to move to the mainland, so that "city officials" could keep siphoning off the money to their private bank accounts in Switzerland, Monaco, and San Marino.

Venetian "government officials" just recently realized that there is salt in salt water, and the walls of the Moses Project are eroding very fast. Also, they were built to stop tidal flooding up to 20 cm, but the average tidal flood is estimated to soon 80 cm.

There are even news paper articles highlighting that the Moses Project was designed to stop the city from sinking, but the walls of the Moses Project are sinking faster than the city. http://espresso.repubblica.it/inchie...ider=undefined

People in power don't generally go to jail in Italy. After a certain age Italy has a law that you can't be put in jail anymore because you are too old and infirm. So they just just keep appealing until they reach that age. That's what Berlusconi did after he was convicted of tax fraud, bribery, and paying an under-aged prostitute. The head of the Moses project who was arrested was deemed too infirm to be in jail and lives in a mansion in La Jolla, California. Mayor Orsini was under four months of house arrest, that was suspended.

The use of the means of state to benefit private interests are part of how Italy operates. You are right, there is a difference of opinion between, "government officials and citizens." I'd side with the citizens on cruise ships, and other issues.

It should also be understood that all of the talk about banning cruise ships has never referred to not letting people visit Venice by cruise ship. It means not letting cruise ships drive by San Marco Square. The boats will have to dock somewhere else because after the Costa Concordia capsized off the Coast of Tuscany it killed that beach town, and it took years to upright the cruise ship and tow it out of there. What would happen to Venice if a cruise ship crashed into San Marco Square? It was after the Costa Concordia that a law was passed banning the cruise ships from the center of Venice, but that still hasn't happened. Hopefully, it will after the vote this month.

I don't know much about Gentiloni, the new Prime Minister, but the three most well known government officials in Italy have all be convicted of some crime; former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi for misuse of taxpayers' money, Silvio Berlusconi for tax fraud, and Beppe Grillo for manslaughter. Side with the citizens on this one, because that cruise ship money is probably being missed by some politician, not the local citizens.

Perche

Venice received a reprieve from UNESCO. The vote was supposed to be this month concerning whether Venice would be placed on the "endangered" list of world heritage sites. Not a day goes by when this hasn't been in the headlines.

First, http://www.veneziatoday.it/cronaca/u...ezia-2019.html

To capsularize, Venezia ha un po' di tempo in più per mettersi "in riga" ed evitare il rischio di essere depennata dalla lista dei beni patrimonio dell'umanità dell'Unesco.

Venice has some extra time to get itself in line as a world heritage site. They pushed back judgement day from this month, to 2019 because they are pleased with all of the measures that Venice has been taking.

Si tratta comunque di una proroga che prevede dei punti da rispettare: in questo lasso di tempo andranno diffusi i dettagli del canale Vittorio Emanuele come alternativa al passaggio delle grandi navi nel bacino di San Marco, ma dovranno anche essere affrontate le questioni del turismo di massa e della conclusione (e gestione) del sistema Mose.

The program has to respect several points; the new canal they are supposed to dredge so that cruise ships can get to Venice without passing in front of Piazza San Marco (Canale Vittorio Emmanuele), the problem of mass tourism, and the Moses Project (gates at the entrances of the lagoon to block water from coming in, to prevent aqua alta. UNESCO was impressed that the government is giving 400 million euros to Project Venice to fix these things.

Sul tema del turismo resta in ballo pure la più recente proposta del Comune relativa al blocco dell'apertura di nuove attività ricettive in città, specialmente bed&breakfast: la delibera sta seguendo l'iter previsto e dovrebbe approdare in Consiglio nelle prossime settimane.

"As for mass tourism, they are happy that it is on the ballot that Venice has a vote this week coming up to block any more establishments of (Air)B&B."

That's a relief. AirBnB sucks more life out of Venice than cruise ships, and if the new law passes Venice will finally have laws governing AirBnB similar to what San Francisco, New York, Berlin, Barcelona, and many other cities already have, although it's about five years too late.

Perche

The law to ban new AirB&B's in Venice has passed. In fact, the headlines say that they did it like cutting off a bad head with a guillotine.

http://www.veneziatoday.it/cronaca/d...a-venezia.html

Ok alla delibera su stop nuovi alberghi e B&B a Venezia "C'è lo stop a nuovi alberghi o B&B a Venezia: ok dalla giunta alla delibera "ghigliottina"

Venice is being de-populated, and one of the main reasons is Air B&B, which causes landlords to push out residents who have been living there for decades, in order to rent out the apartment to tourists for a few nights at a time and charge tourists for one night what the people would normally pay one month's rent for. Since tourists don't need tailors, barber shops, cleaners, the neighborhood businesses then all go out of business, and pretty soon, there is no neighborhood left.

Cruise ships and Air B&B have been killing Venice, and they are finally doing something to stop it with this law. Some of the interesting phrases in the article, http://www.veneziatoday.it/cronaca/d...a-venezia.html

"stop nuovi alberghi e B&B a Venezia
"stop alle variazioni degli alloggi per uso turistico.“

"stop all new variations of themes of places to stay for tourists."

"di fatto intende bloccare l'apertura di nuove strutture ricettive in centro storico e l'ampliamento di quelle già esistenti."

"We already have enough places for people to stay."

insomma, una risposta a chi vede nell'"invasione turistica" uno dei più grossi problemi del capoluogo.

"In summary, this is a response to the "invasion of the tourists" one of the biggest problems facing Venice as the capital of the region."

D'altronde secondo un censimento del Comune i posti letto a uso turistico a Venezia (senza contare quelli abusivi) sarebbero 47.229, esclusa la Giudecca. In pratica si raddoppia in un colpo solo la popolazione residente. Abbastanza per dire "basta".“

The last census, which didn't include Air B&B, considered to be "in nero," or operating in the shadows illegally because they don't pay any taxes, show 47,229 beds for rent in Venice, not including in Giudecca. Which in one blow doubles the population of the city (Venice has about 54,000 residents, and if the majority of people are sleeping two in a bed, I can understand the calculation). This is enough to say basta, enough!

Perche

Venice is about to publish a map showing all of the B&B's that don't pay taxes, and is considering making tourists responsible for not renting there because it is supposed to be published on an accessible Google website.

They established a link with the Finance Ministry and the Venetian Police Department to establish this map. They determined which places are renting rooms, then went to the Finance Department to see which ones have never paid the room tax. They also encouraged residents to notify them if there "constantly change in your building every few days, with none of the people speaking Italian." In the map below in red are the B&B's verified as operating, "in nero," meaning there is no record of them paying the for tourist tax for people staying in their room. In yellow are the places under investigation for being illegal.

200 "B&B,'s" operating in nero have already been arrested. This prompted 2,000 Venetians supposedly "sharing their apartment," to rush to the banks to register so they can start paying the tourist tax. Before this they would collect the tax money from tourists, and the tourists would think that the person "sharing" their apartment was actually going down to the Finance Department and paying the tax.

I like how Venice is finally standing up for itself.

Below is an early rendition of the map in crude form. In red are B&B's who who have never paid the tourist tax, which includes mansions on the Grand Canal. The yellow ones are currently under investigation. I'm not sure about this, but I personally wouldn't plan my vacation on staying at a "B&B" of someone acting in the black. The purpose of this soon to be released map is to make the tourists share responsibility for making sure that they are renting a legal apartment.

Perche

Most Italian newspapers carried the story about the new Venice map of legal and illegal apartments, which is supposed to be updated daily.

http://corrieredelveneto.corriere.it...65335936.shtml
Headline: "Un clic sulla mappa per scoprire se il b&b del vicino di casa è abusivo." (Just a click on the map to discover if the B&B is a house of abusers.)

Perche

Interesting video that was on TV in Venice today. It's in Italian, but all that matters is the pictures.
http://www.veneziatoday.it/cronaca/v...ela-video.html

obscure2k

Heartbreaking. I have tears in my eyes.

Perche

I'm looking at it with an upbeat attitude, because Venice is starting to act. As I posted upstream, Venice was about to post a map of all of the places where tourists can stay in the city. I posted a preliminary picture, but it has now gone live. They started a project called, "Venice Journey," which was a way to map every single place that a tourist can stay at in Venice.

Then, they coordinated with the finance department to determine if those same places had ever paid the tourist tax (Everyone who legally stays in Venice has to pay a nominal daily tax. Given the number of tourists, if the tax was actually paid it would add tens of millions of euros per year to the city.). The result was an arrest of 200 B&B renters who were supposedly, "sharing their apartment with people when they were out of town," but who were actually running a hotel.

This caused such a scare that 2,000 AirBnB "sharers" went to the Finance Department to register themselves so that they could start paying the tax. The amount of money that Venice has lost to unregulated AirBnb is estimated to be even more than Rome and Milan have lost from unlicensed and untaxed Uber drivers.

http://www.ilgazzettino.it/nordest/v...i-2507478.html

Today, the map and website were released to the public. It's not a newspaper article, it is in the public domain so I can put it up here. It is posted on the Commune of Venice home page as, "Live, What is Happening in the City."

http://live.comune.venezia.it/it/art...ture-ricettive

It tells Venetians to let authorities know if in their apartment building they notice different tenants every few days, most of whom do not speak Italian. They should report the apartment to authorities because Venice has banned opening up any more AirBnB's.

The main website is GeoIDS, which goes further. It lists every single place to rent for a stay in Venice, and suggests that people go on that website to make sure that they are staying in a legal place, and not, "in nero," or illegally, or else the burden is on them. At this time, I wouldn't take that too seriously and change plans because it's not even posted in english yet. I also wouldn't want to show up as a family of 6 on vacation to find out that I was staying at an illegal AirBng that was shut down, and not know how to rent another place on the spot.

http://geoportale.comune.venezia.it/...S&LOCALE=IT-it

It's still a work in progress, but seems very good for Venice

Translated in brief, "The platform that was added to our city website last night lists all registered, and canceled out places to stay. This is based on various criteria offered by the Municipality, each sector and location in the city, and the name and address of each structure. You can click on any point and see evidence of your research. The different colors describe the type of place, and you can see a list of details. Citizens who want to signal B&B like activities, with this map, can do so, in anonymous form, by a link on the page. In the next few months you will be able to see information provided by the owner, including when they registered as a hotel and to pay taxes, and other data that will serve the public. GeoIDS has been a splendid result of teamwork by various government agencies that serves the interests of all, whether it is the city's budget, the tourists, and our city's heritage."

So, things seem to be turning around for Venice.

obscure2k

Perche, thank you for the update.

TravelinSperry

Wild. When is high season over? Also - is there a way to see when cruises come to Venice (or don't)? So one can pick days when they aren't around?