Venice in the future. Stefano Croce, Association of Tourist Guides

A rebirth focused on the city’s humanity with homes for residents, artisan and neighborhood workshops, technology, and a Special Statute for a sustainable Venice: Stefano Croce, President of the Venice Association of Tourist Guides for #RiscrivereilFuturo of Venice

Venezia da Vivere and the Associazione Piazza San Marco continue the #RiscrivereilFuturo project, interviewing figures from the worlds of business, art, university, and many others who live and work in Venice. An open debate that today features the thoughts of the President of the Venice Association of Tourist Guides, Stefano Croce.

How do you imagine Venice in the future?

In Venice, over the last few decades, uncontrolled tourism pressure has made life in the historic city increasingly difficult. Overtourism has been unsustainable for many years now because it is no longer in balance with the social and natural environment, and because it has made the city dependent on a tourism monoculture to which all other forms of economy have yielded or had to adapt.

I want to imagine, then, and hope that the end of the pandemic will see a rebirth of Venice through a rebalancing of tourism and residency; because excess tourism not only produces undesirable effects on the environment and inhabitants, but also because it does not bring further gains, as it repels quality tourism which, being more educated and interested, normally allows for a longer visit and, unlike “hit and run” tourism, supports the city’s economy.

I therefore imagine a Venice where a reduction in the daily number of tourists and beds dedicated to them – which have recently multiplied also due to the Airbnb phenomenon – sees a more livable city with more accessible streets and public transport, with fewer outdoor seating areas for bars and restaurants, with more polite tourists and kinder Venetians, and with more apartments for residents and more artisan workshops and neighborhood shops.

I imagine a city where other forms of economy are encouraged besides tourism, which mostly produces low-skilled work: waiters, bartenders, and cleaning staff; a city that, through a Special Statute, provides tax incentives to attract companies and headquarters of national and international institutions – for example, related to environmental studies, digital technology, or advanced services – where qualified work is created, capable of retaining young Venetians and attracting new ones.

I imagine a city in balance with its environment, where air and water pollution are kept under control, where the lagoon, its canals, and its banks are respected through limitations on wake production and the entry into the lagoon of ships with a tonnage incompatible with its natural channels. In short, a city with a sustainable future and therefore an example of “modernity,” as it is centered on respect for humanity and its environment.

What can politics and citizens do for a rebirth of Venice?

Politics must initiate and guide a sustainable restart. Local administrators should request a Special Statute for Venice from the Italian State that allows for tax breaks to encourage jobs alternative to tourism, as well as rentals for residents, local shops, and quality craftsmanship.

They should limit the number of daily and overnight tourists to a maximum considered “sustainable,” and for this purpose, implement a booking mechanism and control of tourist access to the city. There should be unified control over the waters of the lagoon and canals so that regulations regarding the speed, tonnage, and polluting emissions of motor vessels can be established and enforced. There should be incentives for traditional navigation, namely rowing, perhaps by designating areas or days – such as Sundays on the Grand Canal – for rowing only (with the exception of water buses and emergency vehicles).

Citizens should actively demand these changes from their administrators with their voice and their vote, but first of all, they must try to become aware that a more sustainable city is not a poorer city because it has fewer tourists, but in the medium term it will be wealthier because it will not only have more quality tourists, but it will also have other forms of economy compatible with its habitat; it will have a richer life with more inhabitants and more young people, and a cleaner, more eco-sustainable city, but above all, a hope for the future that otherwise the depopulation and wear and tear of recent decades would have precluded.

Propose a specific idea in at least one of these areas: environment, residency, work, culture, safety, tourism.

Tourism must be sustainable. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), tourism activities are sustainable when they “do not alter the social, natural, and artistic environment” and when they “do not hinder or inhibit the development of other economic activities.”

UNESCO, in the 2002 Budapest Declaration, considers sustainable development to be one in which there is a “balance between culture and economy, between local identities and tourism, environmental protection and development in a vision shared with all local stakeholders.”

According to these definitions, in Venice, tourism sustainability can only be sought through the best possible compromise between the economic income generated by tourism and the need to control and minimize the undesirable effects it generates for the place and its inhabitants.

Even before the pandemic, many licensed guides in Venice had launched the Venice Guides for Sustainable Tourism project to raise visitor awareness of respect, promote Venice’s artistic and cultural offerings, and limit the number of people in groups. However, this must be integrated into a comprehensive flow management strategy that is the responsibility of the city administration and which, to be sustainable, must not, as has been suggested, “spread” the excess tourists throughout the city, thereby distorting even the areas that are still livable, but must instead provide for a drastic reduction in visitors in compliance with UNESCO recommendation no. 3 to “address overtourism.”

To do this, the idea of a “landing tax” must be abandoned because small price differences in different seasons will not shift significant flows of tourists who are already spending on flights, cruises, and visits to other cities.

An effective reduction of tourism in Venice can instead occur through control of tourist entries via booking and daily planned numbers. The obstacle of the principle of free movement of people is surmountable both because the method is already active in other island realities – Pianosa, Giannutri, and Montecristo – and because, if it can be set aside in a health emergency, it must also be for another emergency: the survival of Venice.

Of course, these corrections in the tourism field, although important, will not be sufficient if they are not included in a policy that involves the equally relevant issues of work, residency, taxation, and respect for the environment, problems that will only be managed effectively within the framework of a Special Statute, the necessity of which has also been recognized by the Patriarch.

It is then up to us to decide how to restart: do we want to turn the page by taking this path of sustainability and legislative specialty, or do we prefer to go back to how it was before, wasting this historic opportunity to save a thousand-year-old city?

Stefano Croce, President of the Venice Association of Tourist Guides.