Is Venice Being Badly Affected By Mass Tourism?

Over tourism has become something that has affected many places. From overcrowded iconic sites to local shops shutting down to accommodate tourists with shops that sell post cards and snow globes.

The Venice population has dropped from 174,808 in 1951 to just 52,994 in 2019, so there have obviously been some effects. The issue of over tourism has affected Venice hugely in the last few years, creating so many problems for the locals that live there. It is suggested by (Hugues, Pilato, & Sheeran, 2018) that Venice may be added to the list of endangered sites.

This research piece will deal with Venice as a tourist destination, how tourism is sustained there and how tourism itself is affecting the City. It will also look into how locals are feeling about their city being changed by growing tourism, what people are doing to stop it and will argue that Venice use to be a good place to live and visit but may only be good to visit now.

The city of Venice is located in North-Eastern Italy. By the mid-19th century Venice had become for most people a tourist city (Quinn, 2007 ). The 4.4 percent increase in tourist numbers since the last record was set in 2016 is well above the European average. The majority of Italys tourists are from Germany, followed up by the UK, France and the US. An anti-tourism movement is happening in some of the country’s most popular spots in 2017, including Venice where over 2,000 locals have protested against overcrowding in their cities and an impact on liveability.

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Their slogan is Mi no vado via which translates to I am not leaving. It is shown that the residents of Venice are aggravated by the mass amounts of tourism in their city and they are not willing to move to accommodate it. (Duflot, 2017 ) has stated that The general message was that, despite the fact that Venice is being sold away, Venetians are not going anywhere and demand a city with housing, services, and opportunities for the residents. Among those who were seen protesting were, families, young children, young couples trying to keep on living in Venice and people in their 60s who have seen the evolution of Venice all through their lives. It is evident that Venice is a good place to visit for the tourists but living there as a local may be more difficult now than ever before.

Venice treasures an infinite amount of culture and history and the citys architectural masterpieces are simply extraordinary, but tourism has lead to shops closing and being used to sell souvenirs and has lead to old streets being crowded with tourists taking photos and exploring. In 2017, officials made the decision that the use of the Guidecca Canal will be closed to ships above 55,000 tonnes. The decision had been made after years of locals complaining about the sight of the huge ships which were much larger than a lot of buildings. Mass rallies were held in Venice, with people protesting that the ships did environmental and cultural damage to the city according to (Corcoran, 2017).