Venice’s capacity for tourism
To assess the capacity of the historic centre of Venice, Canestrelli and Costa (1991) undertook a complex mathematical modelling exercise to examine the parameters to consider in any future visitor management plan. This established what is called the ‘carrying capacity ’ (i.e. how many vis itors can the historic city accommodate). The optimal carrying capacity for the historic city of Venice would be to admit 9780 tourists who use hotel accommodation, 1460 tourists staying in non-hotel accommodation and 10 857 day trippers on a daily basis. Even if the 4.1 million day trippers who currently visit Venice were evenly spread this would still amount to 11 233 trippers a day. In fact it is estimated that an average of 37 500 day trippers a day visit Venice in August. Canestrelli and Costa (1991) argued that a ceiling of 25 000 visitors a day is the maximum tourist capacity for Venice.
There are important implications for the environment and its long-term preservation if the tourist capacity is being exceeded. Once the capacity is exceeded, the quality of the visitor experience is eroded and the physical fabric may be damaged; extra strain is placed on the infrastructure. Yet the large volume of visitors which descend on Venice each year not only Visitor management 509 exceeds the desirable limits of tourism for the city, but also poses a range of social and economic problems for planners. For example, over 1.5 million visitors go to the Doge’s Palace each year while small numbers visit lesserknown attractions, illustrating the massive congestion at flagship and iconic attractions and areas such as St Mark’s Square. As van der Borg et al. (1996: 52) observed:
the negative external effects connected with the overloading of the carrying capacity are rapidly increasing, frustrating the centre’s economy and society … excursionism [day tripping] is becoming increasingly important, while residential tourism is losing relevance for the local tourism market … [and] …the local benefits are diminishing. Tourism is becoming increasingly ineffective for Venice.
Thus, the negative impact of tourism on the historic centre of Venice is now resulting in a self-enforcing decline. Excursionists, who contribute less to a local tourism economy than staying visitors, supplant the staying market as it becomes less attractive to stay in the city. Up until 2000, changing the attitude of the city’s tourism policy-makers was difficult: the pro-tourism lobby heavily influenced it. Since 2000 a number of positive measures have been enacted to address the saturation of the historic city by day visitors including denying access to the city by unauthorized tour coaches via the main coach terminal.
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In 2001 a new mayor was elected and introduced a number of emergency measures to safeguard the future of tourism by:
● the introduction of a tourist tax to recover some of the external costs of tourism
● imposing a strict control on motorized traffic in the canals to reduce the wash effects on gondolas and buildings
● the introduction of a multi-million pound mobile flood barrier, despite protests from ecologists, to reduce the regular flooding to be in place by 2012.
Another serious issue that impacts upon the quality of the tourist experience is the effluent problem in the city: the absence of sewers results in algal growth and a notable stench in the summer season.
Environmental processes that affect both the local and tourist population must also be recognized – such as flooding. Flooding in Venice now means that St Mark’s Square, an icon for visitors, floods forty to sixty times a year compared to four to six times a year at the beginning of the twentieth century. As a result, tourism must be balanced with measures of environmental protection and management. Positive steps are needed to provide a more rational basis for the future development and promotion of tourism in the new millennium. Glasson et al. (1995: 116) summarized the problem of seeking to manage visitors and their environmental impact in Venice:
every city must be kept as accessible as possible for some specific categories of users, such as inhabitants, visitors to offices and firms located in the city, and commuters studying or working in the city. At the same time, the art city needs to be kept as inaccessible as possible to some other user categories (the excursionist/day-trippers in particular).
The behaviour of visitors combined with the volume of visits has led the Mayor’s office to introduce a Tourist Code of Conduct based on a range of principles including some of the following:
● Visitors should obtain a map and look beyond the iconic attractions (although visitors visit to see these very features); this is to try and geographically disperse visitors around the city. It is widely argued that overcrowding due to tourists has affected the residential ambience of the city, which is why many residents have left. If this trend continues Venice could become a living museum with a minimal resident population – at worst a cultural Disneyland.
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● Tourists should keep to the right in the streets to help reduce congestion and to improve the flow of people.
In addition, new laws have been passed to regulate tourist behaviour in St Mark’s Square (Articles 12, 23 and 28 of the Regulations of the Metropolitan Police of the City of Venice) which prohibit visitors from:
● lying down in public places
● sitting or lingering on the street, or eating picnic lunches
● throwing litter on the floor
● swimming in the canals or in the St Mark’s Bay area
● riding bicycles or other vehicles in the city
● performing unsafe or bothersome activities
● undressing in public places
● walking about the city shirtless or in bathing costumes.
Any breach of these rules will be receive a 50 euros fine. Source: www.commune.venezia.it
The example of Venice shows that, while tangible economic benefits accrue to the city, social and environmental costs are substantial. Montanari and Muscara (1995)argued that Venetian water transport plays a major role in tourism (including as a spectacle for 128 regattas it hosts each year) within the city and could be used to manage visitors, while the city needs to plan to separate the access, circulation and exit of the resident/commuting population and tourists. Russo (2002) expanded this debate, and argued that the better matching of tourism demand (i.e. visitors) with the available supply of attractions through improved marketing and information would bring some economic benefits to the city. It would also assist in geographically spreading the impact of visitors. But a much more visitor-focused management strategy is also needed, with policies and actions to:
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● increase the attraction potential in some areas
● place access restrictions in some areas.
This could be achieved through a range of visitor management measures listed in Table 12.8 . These combine soft and hard controls, listing the problem (causation), reviewing the context of addressing it and suggesting potential interventions. In some respects, the recent growth in cruise-ship traffic (short-term high-volume day trippers) has also placed additional strains on the city’s tourist infrastructure. The introduction of the Venice Card in 2004 to give pre-booked visitors priority entry to attractions has been a move in the right direction, as it allows the city to limit the number of visitors to 25 000 on peak days when up to 50 000 people can descend on the city. Russo’s (2002) advocacy of greater taxation/tariffs to ‘disincentivize’ excursions is likely to be implemented. Russo rightly advocates tourism management as a starting point to plan the future for tourism in the city, to raise the industry from saturation and stagnation. The continued growth in the numbers of day trippers has led to a deterioration in the quality of the tourist experience. This case study is significant in that it highlights the prevailing problems affecting many historic cities and both the political and policy issues that must be addressed to manage the impacts so that tourism does not destroy its vital resource – the environment.
Venice may be an extreme example of a city under siege. The management of visitor numbers and flows of these visitors is central to the longterm management of the destination. Venice has long passed any level of what might naively be called ‘sustainable’ tourism, meaning that tourism management must adopt a model of crisis management and deploy a radical solution.
Since tourism is a powerful force in many economies, some degree of planned intervention by the public sector, as well as the increasing number of public –private sector partnerships, will be essential in terms of implementing visitor management plans and tools. If the example of Venice tells us one thing, it is that the excesses of tourism can quickly destroy the visitor experience, the resource base and the potential for sustainable tourism if it goes unchecked.
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