That is the goal. The price increases, cost of living increases and the gentrification that is brought by tourism in certain places in Europe are so high that "tourist go home" became a common graffiti and the locals are livid.
“The Brits and Germans are the worst, they make our lives hell here,” the pensioner yells, after a group of young tourists fails to move out of the way on the narrow pavement. Her insults are met with cheers from a group of elderly gentleman sitting in a nearby café.
“I spit on the scum from my balcony,” one of them says to the jeers of his friends.
The beef that the young have with tourists is more life-affecting: They get gentrified out of being able to rent or buy housing in the neighborhoods that they grew up in. Either through housing moving to become airbnbs or through rich foreigners buying out houses. The latter relates more to golden visas and digital nomads though. Ah, and yes, 'digital nomad go home' also started to appear as a graffiti as well.
> lying about the goal is what I suppose they meant, and I tend to agree
You think a city official needed to scrounge up some funding and came up with this, a highly visible and obstructive method, instead of raising it indirectly?
No. Locals were demanding officials do something against the rampant overtourism, so they needed to act precisely in a highly visible and obstructive way.
But the main goal was of course to assure whatever they did wouldn't jeopardise tourism as the city's main revenue stream.
5€ is equivalent to a short-term parking fee and won't deter many visitors, except a few that wouldn't have been valuable to the city anyway. It won't make a dent into the actual overtourism problem.
> the main goal was of course to assure whatever they did wouldn't jeopardise tourism as the city's main revenue stream
The whole point is there are boatloads of tourists who contribute nothing to the local economy.
> 5€ is equivalent to a short-term parking fee and won't deter many visitors, except a few that wouldn't have been valuable to the city anyway
This is a lot of cruise ship visitors to Venice. I agree the rate is set too low. But that’s different from judging the primary motivation as a money grab.
Are they only charging or also restricting the number of tickets available per day?
Restricting the number of tickets is probably an effective way of handling overtourism.
Just charging would probably be only be effective in reducing the numbers of tourists if the price were much higher. And then it would, righltly, be seen as unfair to poorer tourists.
Tangentially related. Is it just my imagination, or has American tourism to Europe been increasing? Follow-up, if I wanted to find the answer to that question, where would I find. A primary source?
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