VENICE, ITALY PREPARES TO CHARGE TOURISTS & REQUIRE BOOKING
Hawai`i Still No Specific Changes Announced
From a control room inside the police headquarters in Venice, Big Brother is watching you.
To combat tourist overcrowding, officials are tracking every person who sets foot in the lagoon city. Using 468 CCTV cameras, optical sensors and a mobile phone-tracing system, they can tell residents from visitors, Italians from foreigners, where people are coming from, where they are heading and how fast they are moving.
Every 15 minutes, authorities get a snapshot of how crowded the city is - alongside how many gondolas are sliding on the Canal Grande, whether boats are speeding and if the waters rise to dangerous levels.
Now, a month after cruise ships were banned from the lagoon, city authorities are preparing to demand that tourists pre-book their visit on an app and charge day-trippers between 3 and 10 euros to enter, depending on the time of the year.
Airport-like turnstiles are being tested to control the flow of people and, should the numbers become overwhelming, stop new visitors from getting in.
Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro says his aim is make tourism more sustainable in a city visited by 25 million people a year. But he acknowledges the new rules are likely to be a hard sell.
"I expect protests, lawsuits, everything...but I have a duty to make this city liveable for those who inhabit it and also for those who want to visit," he told foreign reporters on Sunday….
