Why Venice will charge tourists to enter

A SURGE in holidaymakers at certain locations in recent years has added a word to the English language: overtourism. The idea that beauty spots are being overrun arose well before the pandemic, but the relaxation of covid-19 restrictions made matters worse, and resulted in the coining of another term. “Revenge tourism” refers to the outpouring of millions of people, desperate to travel after two years cooped up. On September 12th the city council of Venice, one of the most-blighted cities, voted to approve the most drastic response so far: the imposition of a peak-time entrance fee of €5 ($5.40) for day-trippers. What are other places doing?

There are two sorts of difficulty. One comprises locations that are just too pretty for their size. Take Hallstatt, a picturesque lakeside village in Austria. It has 700 inhabitants and up to 10,000 visitors a day. Last month exasperated locals blocked the tunnel that leads to the village. The equally enchanting Boracay in the Philippines tries to squeeze 2m tourists a year into an island of four square miles without ruining it. How? Impossible, it would seem. Such is the stench of uncollected rubbish that in recent months schools have had to close temporarily.