Inquiry question: To what extent unsustainable tourism has impacted Venice?

Student Code: HTJ910

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Table of Content

Introduction: ........................................................................................................................... 3
Research Question: To what extent unsustainable tourism has impacted Venice? ......................... 3
Syllabus: Option E Leisure, tourism, and sport ........................................................................ 3
Hypothesis: ......................................................................................................................... 3
Geographical context: ........................................................................................................... 3
Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 5
Analisis: ................................................................................................................................. 5
Conclusion: .......................................................................................................................... 12
Evaluation: ........................................................................................................................... 12
Sources:.............................................................................................................................. 14

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Introduction:

Research Question: To what extent unsustainable tourism has impacted Venice?

Syllabus: Option E Leisure, tourism, and sport

Hypothesis:

• If Venice continues having the same approach towards tourism in a few years, it will

become an inhabitant place.

• If Venice increases the limitations for the access to the province, therefore the impact

will be unnoticeable

• If Venice can continue with the same approach towards tourism will lose its

reputation and tourist attractions.

Geographical context:

I decided to study the impact of unsustainable tourism in Venice because of the pandemic

outbreak, we were limited in various ways that didn't allow us to have a complete

investigation in near locations with enough information. Venice tourism has an accessible

amount of information.

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Venice is the capital of the Province of Venice and of the Veneto Region, in northeastern

Italy. The Commune of Venice comprises 118 islands of the Venetian Lagoon. The total

estimated population is 271,000 inhabitants, of which 90,000 live in the insular area and

60,000 in the historic center and the rest on the other smaller islands. The core of the city of

Venice is located on the islands in the center of the lagoon, about 4 km. Venice was built on

thousands and thousands of wooden piles buried in the unstable soil of the islands. On them,

they built the luxurious palaces that border the 177 canals, crossed by 455 bridges. Venice is

divided into six different zones.

Map 1: Map of Venice

Link to theory:

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Sustainable tourism is the goal of any location, tourism is expected to have a development

with a balance between environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects. “Sustainability

principles refer to the environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects of tourism

development. A suitable balance must be established between these three dimensions to

guarantee its long-term sustainability” UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO, ND).

Methodology

Data bases:

For this internal assessment because of the current situation that we are currently living

with covid-19 we were limited in terms of experimentations, we were allowed to use data

bases to do our internal evaluations. We use different sources wile gathering data, mainly

using primary sources, like the ones provided by the government of Venezia. On the other

hand, we use multiple secondary sources, many of these sources were from reports of

reputable journals, like BBC, El Pais, BBVA.

Analisis:

Venice has a problem with sustainable tourism, which seeks to develop its activity by

generating a minimum impact on the environment, but the exploitation of a resource is below

its renewal limit. Venice had been lacking the promotion of tourism that respects the

ecosystem, with minimal impact on the environment and local culture. In addition, the

economic aspect seeks to generate employment and income for the native population.

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According to The United Nations World Tourism Organization, sustainable tourism should:

1. Make optimal use of environmental resources that constitute a key element in tourism

development, maintaining essential ecological processes and helping to conserve natural

heritage and biodiversity.

2. Respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, conserve their built and living

cultural heritage and traditional values, and contribute to inter-cultural understanding and

tolerance.

3. Ensure viable, long-term economic operations, providing socio-economic benefits to all

stakeholders that are distributed, including stable employment and income-earning

opportunities and social services to host communities, and contributing to poverty alleviation.

(UN, 2020)

The crisis of tourism is getting worse with the pass of the time. A continuous increase in

overnight stays had been increasing, most cases doubles and even triples that of just ten years

ago, the main European tourist cities such as Venice, Amsterdam, Prague, Palma, Barcelona,

Lisbon or Dubrovnik long ago exceeded their capacity for tourist load and suffer a process of

environmental deterioration that not only affects the quality of life of the local population but

also puts the very sustainability of the model at risk.

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Displacements

Graph 1: Venice historic population (1871-2017)

Source: Ufficio Statistica Comune Venezia

In the graph two we can see that the historic population of Venice is decreasing with the past

of the years, there are many factors that add into it. The historian and archaeologist Salvatore

Settis glossed in 2014 in the prophetic said that “If Venice dies the great evils of the island,

warning of an unstoppable advance towards the Disneylandization of the territory and the

loss of identity” (S.Settis, 2014). 100,000 inhabitants have left in the last four decades, falling

at a rate of 1,000 a year (today there are around 58,000). But second homes, beautiful and

large houses, and rich people who spend a week a year are increasing.

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One of the most alarming is the accelerated process of abandonment of the local population,

fleeing from overcrowding and tourist suffocation. The number of native residents has

plummeted, there is risk is to stop being a true city made of inhabitants and become a theme

park. There is no public policy: local, central, or regional. Nor any idea to attract young

people. The real estate market is completely adulterated. Even the gondoliers leave the island.

Gondoliers who deal daily with the raw material of this industry and now curse the groups

that demand to get into their sharp boat to save money. Chinese have 13% of the real estate of

Venice, and another big portion of it is rented by tourists.

“I'm a gondolier, not stupid. We have sold the city to the Chinese. Look at all those windows

with the 'For Rent sign. This doesn't belong to us anymore." A few steps further, in the San

Bartolomeo field, a counter installed in the Morelli pharmacy provides daily data on the

population drop.” (Kangasmäki, J. 2020)

The high cost of living that Venice currently have made students of the two historic

universities, Ca' Foscari and the IUAV of architecture cannot afford an apartment in the

fourth city with the most expensive rent in Italy and the highest Airbnb density, mainly

because of the high princes. Most of the departments have “For rent” signs.

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Graph 2: Number of tourist arrivals in the municipality of Venice

Source: Statista

Venice is one of the destinations with the most tourist influx in Europe, this has made its

popularity continue to increase over time, we can observe on graph one that the amount of

tourist that Venice receives each year has a trend of constant grow. Having its peak in 2019

with 5.523 thousand tourists. Venice it is a city cannot retain its own populace; no amount of

tourist tax will be able to avert its inevitable decline and its negative impact of tourists, there

are six hundred tourists for each resident.

The tourism flows of Venice after studies from Venetian data scientist Fabio Carrera has

concluded that Venice’s maximum carrying capacity is 55,000 tourists per day, or twenty

million per year if European safety standards are to be maintained. It is near to the current

number of 25 million, he points out it just needs to be managed better and differently. As a

direct consequence, and beyond the deterioration of its historical heritage, the city's basic

services (waste management, street cleaning, urban transport, drinking water supply or

energy consumption, among others) are on the verge of collapse, that the more than two

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billion euros of profit generated by tourism do not compensate for the high costs it is having

for the city.

Picture 1: A cruise ship sailed through the Giudecca canal in July 2012.

Source: Marco Secchi (GETTY)

The hundreds of cruise ships mass tourism ships that can accommodate up to 4,000

passengers contribute to air pollution and generate an impact on the delicate aquatic

environment. The disproportionate growth of the cruise ships that enter the lagoon every day

to unload thousands of tourists at its docks, experts blame the rental boom (in some cases

legal) of tourist apartments as one of the main causes of the tourist collapse that Venice

suffers. Giudecca dock were an uncontrolled cruise ship of 66,000 tons and 275 meters in

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length was stamped. Thousands of people disembark every day at the ports of maritime

tourist cities, contributing little to the cities where they dock and generating pollution and

waste.

Waste and trash

The millions of tourists who visit Venice put enormous pressure on the environment,

generating a lot of waste and causing excessive use of the vaporetti (buses and water taxis).

They also involve excessive transit through historic buildings. San Marco Square, the

centerpiece of Venice, now floods more than sixty times per year, compared to four times per

year in 1900. Storms sometimes put more than 70% of the city under water, raising the level

by 156cm. Within 50 years, this type of flooding could occur with every high tide. The

increase in flooding in Venice is due to the combined effects of land subsidence and rising

sea levels because of climate change. City records show that Venice's sea level has

consistently risen a total of 26cm since 1870. Later measurements show that sea level

continues to rise by 2.4mm per year.

Bad tourism.

The elevated level of bad tourists goes hand in hand with the high influx of people entering

Venice, arrogant tourists dare to intrude on religious sites while weddings, baptisms and

funerals are taking place. The social ties that once existed in Venice, its pace of life, even its

vibrant craft activity, are now gone.

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Conclusion:

We can conclude after analyzing all the different factors that add to an unsustainable tourism

in Venice, is that due to its large influx of annual people and its poor management in terms of

control of the local structure, and the few limitations that are placed on the entry of tourists to

its territory, the hypothesis of If Venice can continue with the same approach towards tourism

will lose its reputation and tourist attractions.

This is since it continuously loses the essence of its tourist attraction, as well as the local

souvenirs / local food, culture and the essence of the place due to the great abandonment of

its territory by locals, uncontrollable income from tourism that affects pollution. both garbage

and greenhouse gases.

Evaluation:

Overall the method of collecting both primary and secondary data was more demanding since

much of the information obtained was in Italian, a language that I do not speak, so the

understanding and analysis that was done through it was not It was optimal since I had to use

translation methods to understand and the message was not always optimal, despite that, there

was enough information, both quantitative data and qualitative data. The investigation could

have been carried out in a better way by searching for more sources of information that were

used very little, for example the use of books or local reports that could have provided us

with other types of information to enrich the analysis, also I could also have done another

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type of approach towards the investigation if the situation was different, by doing first hand

surveys and fieldwork in the location.

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Sources:
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8, 2022, from https://www.ibgeographypods.org/4-managing-tourism-and-sport-for-

the-future.html

C.V. (n.d.). dati.venecia.it. Citti Di Venecia. Retrieved April 18, 2022, from

https://dati.venezia.it/?q=area-tematica/popolazione

D. (2021, August 2). ¿Qué es el turismo sostenible? BBVA NOTICIAS. Retrieved April 8,

2022, from https://www.bbva.com/es/sostenibilidad/que-es-el-turismo-sostenible/

de Rossi, R. (2018, October 24). Da 175.000 a 56.000 abitanti: così si svuota Venezia. La

Nuova di Venezia. Retrieved April 18, 2022, from

https://nuovavenezia.gelocal.it/venezia/cronaca/2015/02/23/news/da-175-000-a-56-

000-abitanti-cosi-si-svuota-venezia-1.10921951

Kangasmäki, J. (2020, July 29). Cuando la contaminación amenaza a los Patrimonios de la

Humanidad UNESCO – Caso Venecia, Italia. Woima Corporation. Retrieved April

18, 2022, from https://woimacorporation.com/cuando-la-contaminacion-amenaza-a-

los-patrimonios-de-la-humanidad-unesco-caso-venecia-italia/

Unmasking Tourism in Venice. (n.d.). MIT DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND

PLANNING. Retrieved April 8, 2022, from http://www.overtourismvenice.mit.edu/

Secchi, M. (2019a, June 15). Venecia, el turismo como problema, la cultura como soluciÃ3n.

El PaÃs. Retrieved April 8, 2022, from

https://elpais.com/cultura/2019/06/14/babelia/1560533295_263944.html

Secchi, M. (2019b, June 15). Venecia, el turismo como problema, la cultura como soluciÃ3n.

Unmasking Tourism in Venice. (n.d.). Unmasking Tourism in Venice. Retrieved April 18,

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