The death of Venice?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 23 July 2019
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Many Venetians say cruise ships and tourist hordes are killing their city - almost literally after one gigantic liner crashed into the harbour on 2 June.
Manuela Saragosa speaks to the activists fighting back: Tommaso Cacciari of No Grandi Navi ("No Big Ships"), Sebastiano Giorgi of Gruppo 25 Aprile, and Matteo Secchi who fears his home town is being steadily transformed into a gigantic theme park.
But it's no simple matter of simply banishing the visitors. Venice receives 30 million tourists each year - some 600 times the number of city residents, most of whom now depend on tourism for their livelihoods. Manuela asks Italian transport minister Danilo Toninelli what the government's plan is. Meanwhile, Jan Van Der Borg of Venice University explains why the economics of tourism is far more lopsided than most policymakers appreciate.
(Photo: A cruise ship in the Giudecca canal, Venice, Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuela Saragossa. |
| 0:06.5 | In this edition, how not to manage your tourist industry? |
| 0:10.4 | Venice sets the example. |
| 0:12.3 | As you can see, we are living in a middle of a mess. |
| 0:16.3 | Venice, the city without cars, it's the third most polluted city of Europe. |
| 0:22.2 | There are people that come here just for four hour |
| 0:24.1 | to do a selfie in San Marcos Square |
| 0:25.9 | and they don't know where they are. |
| 0:28.2 | It's terrible and sad to see this kind of tourism. |
| 0:31.2 | Venice, the Italian city, |
| 0:33.1 | on the front line against over-tourism. |
| 0:35.7 | That's all here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:46.8 | I'm about to get onto a small ferry here in Venice. It's what they call a Vapito to cross the Judecac canal from one part of the |
| 0:57.1 | city to the other side. And this is a really important thoroughfare here in Venice. It passes by |
| 1:02.4 | some of the iconic buildings, some of the iconic places of Venice. And it's really, really busy. |
| 1:07.5 | Lots of small boats, little motorboats, private and public and lots of |
| 1:11.3 | little ferries, criss-crossing. But this is also a canal which is being increasingly used by the |
| 1:17.9 | huge cruise liners coming into Venice, which has really gotten a lot of the residents angry because |
| 1:24.1 | they say not only are these cruise ships getting bigger and bigger every year, |
| 1:28.2 | they're unsightly, they're adding to the problem of overtourism, but they're also increasingly |
| 1:33.5 | dangerous. And some say it's an accident waiting to happen. |
| 1:47.4 | Venetians have good reason to be worried. |
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