VENICE — Tourists in Venice have always seemed to be everywhere. But now, for the first time, locals are about to be reduced to minority status.
The stunning fact for the iconic lagoon city is confirmed by a special “tourist bed counter” installed in the windows of a secondhand bookstore, MarcoPolo. As of this week, there are 48,596 beds for tourists versus 49,365 residents. At this rate, the ratio of one tourist per one resident may be just weeks away. And from there, unless something changes, tourists will eventually leave Venetians as mere extras in their own city.
The counter installed at the local bookshop in Campo Santa Margherita is not the first of its kind: On March 21, 2008, a residents’ counter was installed in a pharmacy. At the time, Venice had 60,704 residents.
Fewer residents
Marta Fiano, Francesco Penzo, Orazio Alberti and Giacomo Maria Salerno of Ocio, a grassroots civic watchdog on housing rights, outlined the data: the 49,365 residents of the island of Venice represent 20% of the residents of the entire municipality, which has about 260,000 people, mostly living on the mainland, while the 48,596 beds for tourist use, of which 21,372 are tourist rentals, represent 61% of the accommodation supply of the entire municipality.
Maybe every Venetian will take a tourist by arm and carry them around.
“Soon there is going to be one tourist per resident, and once that day comes, we will definitely do something,” quipped Matteo Secchi of “pro-Venice” website Venessia.com. “Maybe every Venetian will take one of them by the arm and lead them around.”
Venessia.com demands that whoever opens a tourist tenancy should be required to be a resident or that, for every new tourist tenancy, new public housing should be made available.
A community struggle
“We wanted to make sure these numbers that are on the municipality’s website are visible to everyone. In this way, we hope the desire for change will be born,” said an Ocio spokesperson, adding that the phenomenon might be even bigger because of the market of undeclared rentals.
Is it possible not to turn the city into a tourist village?
“Our storefronts have always housed claims and battles as forms of community struggle,” said Claudio Moretti.
The purpose of the two counters is to spark the question for any passerby: Is it possible not to turn the city into a tourist village? A question that is not obvious given that the city administration has not yet done anything, despite having the means to intervene in the regulation of tourist leases.
In other Italian cities that are beginning to have similar problems, such as Florence or Bologna, support is growing for imposing limits on tourists as a national law, but such an idea remains a long-shot.
