Girlspytravel

No question. It's a huge issue for Italian govt. officials at all levels-and there is a specific term in Italian to describe just the type of tourist "issue" you describe that is really wreaking such havoc in the golden triangle" as it is sometimes called. "Morde e fugge" (bite and run) tourism-is very very hard on the art cities, little to no money spent by such tourists, but huge amounts of money in clean-up and other city services to accomodate this increasingly problematic tourist category. Esp. true in Venice of course, hence the attempted tourist tax (that got shot down) and now, the sustainability factor-but it's just as bad if not worse in Florence, the difference of course being that people can spread out to the countryside here and get in their cars and go, but the historical center is absolutely mobbed-pretty much all year round now, as is true in Rome.

tomassocroccante

<<Every week, I'm reading that the vaporettos are bursting at the seams, looking like refugee boats, residents can't enjoy their city, and if there are no residents, there is nothing but a Venice that is a living museum. <<

And if I remember the count correctly, the number of year round residents in Venice is down aroung 40,000 - from ca. 110,000 20 years ago.

Yet the tourist count goes up and up. I read in the February "Culture and Travel" magazine that "Giudecca has always been the most quiet of the main islands that cluster in the lagoon ... but that is about to change." The quiet residential island will be home to The Palladio HOtel (bauerhotels.com) is going into a 1500 convent by the legendary architect. Also on Diudecca, the 390 room Molino Stucky Hilton, in a brick flour mill that is "one of the tallest buildings in Venice." (Looks to be about 9-10 stories)

As an outsider, and admittedly a biased one, it feels like keeping cruise ships over a moderate size out of the lagoon would be a huge step. Ultimately it gets to be like logging forests = you don't want to see all the loggers lose their jobs, but if you let the practice go unregulated, they will, eventually, because the land will be stripped. It might p-off the cruise industry and some others to be shut out, but if Venice is destroyed, they will have to find another port of call anyway.

This is why I have a benign attitude toward Vegas: if they can create an ersatz Paris and virtual Venice to satisfy the more voracious of visitors, all the better.