VENICE – Gondolas, canals and all those bridges. For many tourists, Venice is all that and only that: the floating city born for Instagram. For others it’s a symbol of the excesses of the modern world: a city turned into a theme park, trampled by overtourism and hollowed out by vacation rentals. The statistics are stark. Around 30 million tourists visit Venice every year, dwarfing the local population, which has now dwindled to less than 50,000. Venetians wanting to remain in their city face a lack of housing stock — since homes have been converted into vacation rentals — a lack of shops for day-to-day life, and a lack of jobs for anyone not involved in the tourist industry. In the meantime, the visitors keep coming, and keep posting those delectable canal shots on Instagram. Around 90% of them are thought to be day-trippers — so although they don’t take up that ever-dwindling housing stock, they use city resources but leave virtually no money behind in the local economy. No wonder some people call Venice the “dying city” and the “sinking city,” Simone Venturini, the city councilor for tourism, tells CNN in documentary “The Whole Story: Saving Venice.” But while the city authorities’ actions — like the 5 euro (roughly $5) daytripper fee trialed in 2024 and set to be repeated in 2025, and the Smart Control Room, which monitors the movements of visitors to the city — have met a mixed response, plenty of other Venetians are taking their own steps to preserve life in the city as they know it. What’s more, many of them are working with visitors, hoping to allay the damage caused by mass tourism with more sustainable projects. In 2018, Emanuele Dal Carlo launched Fairbnb, a platform for vacation rentals owned strictly by local residents. One of the major reasons for the exodus of Venetians to the mainland in recent years is the dearth of housing stock in the city. There are currently 8,322 Airbnb listings in Venice according to Inside Airbnb, 77% of which are entire properties. Two thirds of hosts have multiple listings –— meaning they’re not just renting out their spare room, or their late nonna’s apartment. “We have nothing against private property, but if you rent 20 houses only to tourists, then you become a problem for your community,” says Dal Carlo, who is one of the tens of thousands of Venetians who have left the city for the mainland, a 10-minute train ride (plus ferry ride to the city center) away. Fairbnb is a similar platform — but all its rentals are owned by local residents, and owners are capped on the number of properties they can advertise. What’s more, 50% of the platform fees are channeled into an on-the-ground project in the destination they are visiting. Tourists may feel that they’re not doing much harm by renting a regular apartment for a few days, but with a rapidly depleting housing stock for locals, Dal Carlo warns that there’s a tipping point. “There’s not going to be another Venice,” he says. “Once you have helped change this place forever, it’s not coming back.” Other residents fight decline by keeping traditions going. Elena Almansi practices voga alla veneta, the stand-up rowing technique used by Venetians to navigate the lagoon for centuries. A competitor in Venice’s regular regattas, she’s one of a group of women offering rowing lessons with Row Venice, a sustainable tourism initiative which takes visitors on trips through the canals of the city, seeing its buildings the way they were meant to be seen: from the water. Then there’s Matteo Silverio, whose startup, Rehub, takes waste materials from the famous glassblowing process on Murano, and upcyles it, using a 3D printer to turn it into artistic creations, including crockery.
