Day-tripper ticket set to increase to €10 on busiest days.

Venice is set to raise its day-tripper entry fee in 2025, after launching the trial scheme earlier this year, in an effort to reduce crowds arriving in the Italian canal city.

The €5 entry ticket, in effect on 29 days including public holidays and weekends from 25 April to 14 July, was introduced to ease pressure on Venice from mass tourism.

The city council is now planning to modify the contentious entry fee from next year, starting with a lower basic rate of €3 for those who book in advance but raising the ticket price to €10 on the busiest days.

The city's tourism councillor Simone Venturini, speaking on the sidelines of a Jubilee Year 2025 conference in Rome on Friday, told Il Fatto Quotidiano that "Venice is still too cheap", stressing that it is time "to think about an increased access contribution to put a stop to excess tourism."

"Venice cannot contain all the people in the world" - Venturini said - "We have to choose what kind of people we want to bring to a city that offers a unique experience in the world, but within a finite space."

The city's budget councilor Michele Zuin also outlined the reasoning behind hiking the entry fee, telling Il Fatto Quotidiano: "We hope to discourage arrivals. The first experimental phase did not show major disincentive effects, but we did not expect them. The situation will change when the maximum ticket is increased to €10."

Describing it as "an attempt to reverse the trend", Zuin said the hope is that people will "not come to Venice when they have holidays, but rather take holidays to go to Venice when it is possible to do so."

The 29-day entry fee system comes to an end on Sunday 14 July.

In the first 27 days of the pilot scheme there were approximately 425,270 paying visitors, earning the city more than €2 million, roughly three times what was forecast for all 29 days.

The €5 entry fee, which has been criticised by opponents as ineffective in reducing crowds, only applies to tourists on day trips, not visitors staying in Venice overnight or the city's residents.

Photo credit: Cristi Croitoru / Shutterstock.com.