this week’s newsletter
this week’s issue of Buongiorno Venezia talks of:
- Redeeming the Redeemer: feast: fireworks, and controversial music
- Yesterday, today, and tomorrow at the film festival
- Deadly cargo: three bodies discovered in a truck
- The ongoing curse of Ca’ Dario
- Death in Venice: an old friend is remembered
If you wish to comment in public, please post your comments here below, or to the related posts here above
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October 17th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Tourist tax and entrance fee.
As to the Government proposal for a new tourist tax for Italian art towns and the AVA’s (Association Venetian Hoteliers) decision against it, I would like to comment that a tax or fee of some kind seem to be needed to cover the costs of the continuous and various tearing and wearing down of Venice. I would however like to say that as far as my experiences as a tourist go a (small) tax will not reduce the number of tourists coming to Venice if that was the aim of the taxation or fee. A tax or fee would merely function as a support to the countinous maintaining of the city’s infrastructures. Hence, I would recommend that one should utilize an established collection system through which the needed infrastructure organisations normally get funding for their business operations. An example is the 6 Euro ticket price on a vaporetto ticket unless you have a Carta Venezia. It could easily be lifted even more. I also seem to remember that the Venice mayor suggested an increased property tax on properties used to tourist accomodation. That is also an instrument I would support. The reason why the hoteliers can charge the high prices they do to day, is mainly a consequence of a continously increasing market. A small increase in tax on their properties will not scare any tourists away or just regulate their profits. But it will have a positive effect on the city’s finances.
If the hoteliers are afraid of the money being lost in governmental bureaucracy I would direct the attention to the taxation system of San Francisco, California where a tax on hotel accomodation is directed into a fund for arts and culture run and administered by a board with members from all walks of life in the tourist industry including the hoteliers.
Kind regards
Kjell Magne Maelen (Norwegian)
p.t. with address in Cannaregio
November 27th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Your Nov 27 Newsletter reports that “on Tuesday, 20 November, a 24-year-old Venetian man attempted suicide by jumping from the Rialto Bridge.” Il Ponte Rialto is truly an elegant venue, but hardly an effective choice from which to suicide.