There have been several articles like this in recent weeks - describing Venice without the huge crowds, and thinking of ways to cut down on the crowds once the lock downs end.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/w...sultPosition=1

One of the comments to this article mentioned that most of the people who come on the cruise ships (that was the number 1 suggestion: ban cruise ships) don't know anything about the city or it's history and are just checking off a box on their plaice to see lists. I know there have been ideas around charging admission but what if in addition to that you had to pass a test. Nothing too hard, but enough to show that you've at least read a bit about the place you are visiting.

I think they should (and could):
Ban cruise ships from the Grand Canal and docking IN Venice
Ban tour buses and large groups (say over 12) (they have already banned picnicking in public spaces, they could easily ban people walking around in groups larger than a certain size
If you are on a cruise ship (docking elsewhere) or a large tour, you can still visit Venice but you have to make your way there independently (via train or private vehicle)
Charge admission - enough to deter people from day tripping - there are only two ways in (the road and the train) so it would be easy enough to do - and at the same time you have to take the test to prove you know something about Venice.

For the sake of accuracy, cruise ships do not go on the Grand Canal, at least not the ones this big:

https://flic.kr/p/7pdcVc
The Grand Canal is the one that snakes through the middle of Venice. But I agree that cruise ships should perhaps be banned from the immediate vicinity of Venice (the city) proper.

I do not recall seeing any tour buses in Venice.

A test for tourists? What next, a religious test for visiting the Vatican? A questionnaire on Paris when you land at CDG?

But I think that the train left the station long ago; or is it the vaporetto in this instance?

It's not just passengers arriving by cruise ship who don't know anything about Venice or its history. Heck, you could quiz the average tourist visiting any major European city and discover how uninformed they are about the place they're in. We've overheard lots of conversations while waiting in lines, sitting on trains, etc., to know that an appalling number of people are just checking off destinations from a bucket list. Even one couple we know fairly well never does any more research about a place than reading a list of Top 10 Things to Do and moves around at a pace as if they're being chased.

Putting a tonnage limit on ship size would make sense. One cause of the more frequent acqua alta is the massive amount of dredging required to maintain the Lido entrance and Giudecca canal to enable large ships to pass. While a large cruise liner appears to barely disturb the water in the Giudecca canal, for every metre that a 100,000 tonne vessel moves, about 1000 cubic metres of water are moved from forward to aft, an underwater waterfall. This trashes the bed of the canal.

Better to bring the bigger ships in through the Malomocco entrance and up the Petroleum Channel to Marghera.

I have no idea how much berthing fees are for the Port of Venice, but just triple them anyway. Also increase the charges for the multitude of smaller vessels serving the tourist trade. These vessels rely on public infrastruce to operate (dredging, pontoons, beacons) so make the tourists pay.

Last year, the Commune tried a traffic diversion, shovelling people over the Scalzi bridge instead of allowing them down the Strada Nova. So much so that a friend living in Santa Croce, Lista dei Bari, could barely leave her front door because of the traffic.

She has moved to Giudecca now.

I suspect people are thinking of the passageway along Giudecca when they talk about cruise ships in the Grand Canal.
We struggle with similar issues with tourism where I live. It's been so nice having our beaches, parks, and trails back for our own use ... but our economy is in tatters, and I see little hope in our local leaders developing any alternative than to try to get back to 10 million visitors a year.

For Venice, my impression was that it was only that 2 km or so stretch between the cruise port train station and St. Marks, and the area around St. Marks, that was truly horrendous. A good start, in my opinion, would be to ban cruise ships, especially that monster one, ban all those sidewalk kiosks in the tourist area, and to crack down on air bnb in the neighborhoods. A more extreme option would be to set a minimum stay of five nights (in my opinion, the minimum amount of time for Venice anyway), though I don't know how you would limit day-trippers. Maybe make them buy a pass, and limit the number?

Well the entrance to the Grand Canal is that area in front of the Doges Palace and the cruise ships go right by there. But yes it's the Giudecca that they actually travel down. But ban them from that area completely - send them down the coast a ways and if people really wanted to see Venice they'd need to independently travel there on their own (by train).

I like the idea of limiting day trippers by having to buy a pass. If you book a minimum number of nights in a hotel (at least two maybe) that would give you a pass. The tourist 'fee' would be collected by the hotel (I know that is one suggestion I have read about). But if you are not staying at a hotel you'd need to purchase a 'day pass' and they could price that high enough to deter at least some day trippers.

There is already a tourist tax levied on hotels, B&Bs and Air BnB. It is about five euros a day, varies with the star rating of the accomodation, and so is very modest.

Certainly there are a bunch of problems, simple overcrowding of streets making it hard to get around, decline in people actually working and making stuff in Venice, and just the overall cost structure.

Add to that the shortage of accommodation for people who actually want to live in Venice and there is a huge problem. Yet their are many buildings that are not inhabited, and have not had the door opened in a decade. Crazy. Try No 1 Santa Croce as an example, vacant for at least 15 years.

The ticket for daytrippers would have been active this year if the virus hadn't hit.

I would ban any ship that lacks full waste water processing plants and has any method of bilge cleaning that enables direct to sea pollution. BTW that would ban nearly all the ships. The discharge from these floating toilets is hurting the sea, causing local food problems etc.

Time for Italy to set a global standard. I wish.

Ban EasyJet and Ryanair while at it.

well at least EasyJ and Ryanair bring people who pay for rooms and food, the ships just bring people who take up space and pay nothin to the locals directly

I'm willing to guess that the cruise passengers buy food and souvenir tat, just like the tourists from the UK.

If the concern is crowding, I wonder what percentage of visitors come by which mode of transportation, and how many day-trippers came by train? ( I stayed in Padua, for example).

A friend who lives in Florence posted a FB live video this morning from a vaporetto in Venice; she and her family are taking the opportunity to enjoy Venice without crowds. It was lovely to see it crowd free, I'm a bit envious!

I too would like to see cruise ships banned from Venice; not sure how much money those tourists really spend there, they've already paid for food on the ship so suspect many of them buy a few trinkets and a sandwich.

See the doc 'The Venice Syndrome'. About a decade ago, it covered the daily lives of a diverse half dozen Venetians. Well worth watching.
I am done. The Doge.

From what I've read, the cruise ship people, and the one's who come via large tour buses (who are housed at hotels somewhere else on the mainland) may buy lunch and a few trinkets, but they don't support the hotels, and rarely buy breakfast or dinner so don't really support the restaurants, and aren't there long enough to do much shopping. These are the ones who make for the enormous crowds mid day and don't contribute to the economy.

People who fly places (Easy Jet/Ryan Air) - and then make their way independently via local bus, train, etc. and then stay in hotels, eat three meals a day, etc. - sure they contribute to the crowds but they help support the economy. There are still lots of tourists around early morning and evening but it's the huge numbers off the cruise ships/tour buses that make it really awful. I'm not sure how many people in Venice seriously want to 'eliminate' tourists, I think they just want to 'manage' the numbers and assure that the city receives something (income) in exchange.

Saying 'lets ban easy jet/ryan air' - you're either kidding or you are totally anti tourism. Saying lets find a way to have sustainable (ecologically, economically, etc.) tourism is different.

Here is one article on the matter. I am concentrating on the cruise ship elements. The article mentions no loss of revenue due to cruise ship visitors, and I am sure that the sellers of trinkets would be unhappy to lose these customers. But if one looks at the numbers, cruise ship visistors represent about 20% of the total visitors. Aside from the destructive proximity of the ships themselves, picking on the cruise ship visitors looks an awful lot like scapegoating.

"Venice received more than 36 million international tourists in 2017, a near 10% rise on the previous year. While travelers fuel the city's economy, they're also the primary contributors to Venice's biggest problem: overcrowding.
From April to October, an estimated 32,000 cruise ship passengers disembark here daily, according to the Port Authority. In August, an additional 465,100 day-trippers make their way to the city, adding to the chaos of an additional 2.2 million tourists who will stay overnight, according to recent National Tourism Agency figures.
Many Venetians believe that everyone should have a chance to experience the beauty of their city, but say that a constant swell of tourists is ruining the experience for everyone.
Cruise ships have caused significant environmental damage to the city's waterways and lagoons -- sometimes colliding with other vessels."

Thanks for some data, I suspected that cruise ship passengers are only a tiny percentage of the "overcrowders".

Probably similar to what I experienced in Lisbon last fall. Mostly European tourists. And that would include the Brits.

Many of the cruise ship passengers are European.

The problem with the cruise ship passengers is they arrive . Stay for a fairly short period of time. Then leave.

If you compare Venice at 8 or even 9am with the moment the cruise ship passengers start arriving you'll see a huge difference. Same thing in the evening when they leave.

It's not 20% spread over the whole city all day long. It's 20% mostly stuck around St. Marks for the short time they have.

What Traveler Nick said. Plus, maybe a small thing in the minds of short-term visitors to Venice, but the complete blight on the skyline of the place is hard to stomach.

I feel the same way about the gigantic cruise ships that have appeared in Bordeaux in the past few years. I don't want to stroll along the Garonne and see some hulking ship dispensing tourists who will flee to the Place du Parlement for a cheap tourist lunch and an overpriced glass of bad Bordeaux. There was a very nice intermediate period between when Bordeaux was a rundown wreck of a 17th-18th-century wine town with needle alleys and filth on the streets and its revitalization under Alain Juppé after 2007, when the street were cleaned up and the small businesses revived. But slowly, and inevitably I suppose, that has meant that Bordeaux has become a shopping center. It costs 18 euros to get into the Cité du Vin, the price of a glass of simple red is often 10 euros or more, and the rue Ste-Cathérine, the old Roman carriageway, is now lined with H&M and Zara and Pimkie and pizza parlors and takeout tacos.

I'm sorry that Alain Juppé couldn't have stopped this trend mid-way. Its truly hideous to see the hulking cruise ships docked on the Garonne. Apart from the fact that they hold zero allure for me, I can't fathom why gorgeous and important European cities are inviting them in. It's not as though tourists were lacking in these places before idiots built mega-ships.

More tourists, more money.