Is tourism harming Venice? | DW Documentary

romantic and captivating Venice is one of the world's most beautiful historical cities a dream vacation for millions of tourists every year it feels like you're in a time warp like you've traveled back in time and are experiencing a life in the past it's fascinating and simply beautiful it's exceeded all my expectations people from all over the world come to Venice to experience the trip of a lifetime and to create lasting memories as I enter the city I too am overwhelmed by its unique ambience I also fall under the spell of its more than ten thousand year history but I quickly notice the hordes of people tourists are everywhere all year round and of course I noticed that giant ships which dwarfed the city's monuments every day up to nine cruise ships sail into the heart of Venice in addition cheap souvenir trinkets are sold on every corner what does all this do to the city and its inhabitants is it still possible to live a normal life here resistance is growing people are taking to the streets I hear them protesting [Music] for this report I've gone behind the scenes in Venice I find decay catastrophic housing conditions in the center a city in decline shuttered up shops all this has eroded the city's quality of life for its resident population a disaster because nobody wanna give apartments to Venetians citizens are paying in terms of damages to their city and their health what caused by the the big ships I wanna fight for this [Music] [Music] how could it come to this in this legendary city what's really going on what's driving the city's wholesale exploitation I've come to Venice to find answers who's profiting and who's paying the price what actually is being sold [Music] access to this jewel of a city is over water most visitors are day-trippers from nearby holiday resorts I booked my accommodation online like most net savvy people nowadays but rather than staying in a hotel I've opted for a private apartment it's cheaper and touted as a more authentic way to experience the city because one comes into contact with local residents it's 270 euros a night for three of us half the price of three equivalent hotel rooms in the same location you just did you buy the whole house the business is easy to rent places like this yes but you make your living with renting things like rented apartments I try this is the first I want to try and try to make like everybody - yes a lot of people yeah yes [Music] people talk about like there's so many tourists and there's too many tourists do you think it's like too many - yes but not only for the how serenity but most of all are for the big hotels because in Venice we have a bigger bigger hotels I'll answer became hotels and Palliser became so Tyler and iris everything became so Tyler you become a hotel - thank you for many Venetians fortunate enough to own property private rentals are a lucrative source of additional income demand from tourists is high and business is booming but how does that impact Venetians who are not homeowners and have to rent their apartments to find out I meet up with Matteo Seki and his family he works as a night porter like his daughter Carla he was born in Venice the family's lease is about to expire and they're facing eviction they need to find a new apartment in their hometown their offers now a long time ago yes now is not very usual to to sell houses or to rent houses by the newspapers a disaster because nobody wanna give apartments to Venetians the owners of the apartment prefer to reign to the apartments weekly monthly so they can earn much more than the following day Matteo takes me to have a look at his apartment located in a typical residential area in the old town he pays 900 euros for just 50 square meters oh we have a contract we call a photo and plus 4 we have 4 years and then we read another 4 here so I am in my seven years of the the next year I I don't know if the owner won't to me in there part thing again they can kick you out that is it if if the cone if the contract is over he can do it he can tell me I don't want you anymore because I wanna rent the apartment to somebody else or to virtuous then he can leave me and so and this is my bedroom and with the bathroom my daughter is a hate here's also she needs something I we need her room of course when she was a young girl no problems to be with the parents but now she needs her space but that's that's common thing like to you you you have the just one room for parents and kids so we don't have other sons to add to the strain Matteo like many in the tourism industry risks losing his job at the end of the season I want to know how things turn out for him and we agreed to meet up again the tourists enjoying the sights of the Lagoon city see no signs of the fight for living space taking place behind the scenes shuttered windows untold are usually an indication that the space is no longer lived in by a local these are tourist apartments only there are no tourists staying right now but even a short term vacancy is worthwhile because tourists pay much more than long-term tenants today there are more privately operated tourist lodgings than hotels that's good for tourists but can a city function normally under such conditions I meet with Giuseppe Tatara a professor of economics in Venice he has studied the flow of tourism revenue into the city and confirms that living in Venice is becoming increasingly difficult for its residents [Music] oh yes because I know they display circus residents affirm accommodation you mean and it's very profitable to enter to you is Ray house Porter is is by foreigners Italians that buy houses invest in Venice as an investment good so they just for renting to tourists and they can get an income which is around can reach 8% per year which for a real estate is in common which is out of any compartment any measure because you a if you buy housing believe me you can have a two three percent he also tells me that much of the income on private accommodation is undeclared revenue that sorely needed in debt-ridden city coffers well you just asked people do you need the family invoice they say many times they say no we don't need so I can give you the discount and you just make sure I mean modest occupational say 50% or 30% about the year in Venice is almost 90 percent goodbye location is this the city's fault would I act the same way a fear I'd either well yeah no people you can't rely on ethics in these things your loss evidently there's a lack of regulation for this market I'll make a note to raise the issue during my appointment at the City Council in two days time as I stroll through the city there's a highlight at every turn naturally public transportation is via boats rather than buses if only the vaporetto weren't so full in Venice it feels like there are often two sides of the same coin the city's beauty and singular appeal have always come at a cost we are on an island in a lagoon everything has to be transported by boat there are no cars transportation weather for people or goods is complicated life has never been simple here Silvia gala is a Venetian who's had enough she's fond of her apartment but she can no longer bear the city's mounting problems so yeah so this is where I live this is my living room it's nice there's a small Terrace out there facing south that's so you get sunshine all day long this is mine this is my kitchen but I'm moving now so I have to pack everything up this one's already empty most of the cupboards are empty it's a shame but I have to leave each more spec why do you have to go you feel I want to leave everything is more expensive here vegetables meat everything because it's more expensive to get goods delivered here they have to be brought by car by truck and then by boat and that drives the costs higher and of course it's the consumer who foots the bill alphabets Allen Sylvia wants to show me around her Venice a city she once loved increasingly foreigners are buying apartments here many elderly people still live in social housing but that too is changing the sister this is a huge hotel owned by the carnival corporation they restored this side first and then this side here but the funny thing is this side here was a post office you can still see where the door was they've a detour and now it's all part of the hotel and the people who live here you've already seen today there are a lot of old people who live around here they have to walk a longer distance to pick up their pension from a post office yes it's paid by the Postal Service and residents can't make ends meet so they move away that's the only light at one we continue our stroll around her quarter canna Reggio like every other Venetian I meet she tells me the infrastructure is crumbling there's less municipal regulation fewer doctors fewer small shops and instead more souvenir stores and private accommodation vice versa for who knows what was in there before grocery maybe a bakery a butcher's let's go once you know what I once saw here the door was open and I could see inside there's a bed in there and a table in a bathroom and it's rented out to tourists that means there are people who sleep in there I find that very objectionable this is it must be unpleasant for them they don't know when they book a room or an apartment that they'll be sleeping here in the window display yes luxury apartment with a view onto the bridge Silvia has decided to move to the mainland we'll check back to see how she fares I research the business model of private short-term rentals Airbnb is the leading provider this graph shows exponential growth I want to know what impact that growth has on the local housing market I find seven thousand private hosts almost three times the number of hotels most of the hosts have more than one property I find one that has 27 listings another even has 90 that's not private home sharing it's an unlicensed commercial enterprise I contact Airbnb spokesperson to find out why commercial listings on the internet platform are not regulated like they are in Berlin to give this kind of advices it's of course is Dean to to institutions who set the rules we are there to support them every city every country needs a unique approach and so we don't believe that one-size-fits-all solution are there to be cut and paste from from a source there are regulation a regional Syrian national level there's stronger regulations on other places I think different regulations what he's saying is City Council could intervene if it wanted to over at its offices on the canal a grand a they're familiar with the problem Palomar is the city's head of tourism [Music] and B provides accommodation for tourists and that's dealt with differently under Italian law from private rentals but at our last meeting with the ministry we decided that we here in Venice must join forces with the other four major tourism centers namely Florence Rome Milan and NATO so no fee vanes Roma we have to sit down with Airbnb and negotiate naturally we can't ban these types of rentals but we need to combat the phenomenon for instance by ensuring that renting to tourists isn't as lucrative as renting to locals or students enough feed the student she's unable to tell me how the city plans to it shave that meanwhile night porter mateo Seki his wife and eight-year-old daughter are still apartment hunting he worries he may be out of a job by the end of the season he can't afford to buy a property for two hundred thousand euros it may be with the help of the bank I find the fifties fifty squares maybe for a normal family it's impossible in 20 years like when your daughter's is growing up do you think it's impossible for her to live here I don't think every year will be much worse than but Mateo refuses to give up we'll catch up with him again later Silvia gala is on her way to her new apartment it's a 15-minute bus ride from historic Venice to mogera on the mainland [Music] what will you miss fine friends but I really don't want to live in this city anymore [Music] on average two Phoenicians abandon their hometown every day here on the mainland rents are just a quarter of prices in Venice and the quality of life is better there's more room for example for a spacious kitchen looks ugly from down below but this is nice we have this huge Terrace it often smells of curry out here but that's good too well and you have a view of Ennis [Music] Matteo Sachi has yet to find a new apartment a couple of years ago he founded a citizens action group that voices protest against commercialization and mass tourism called venecia calm this is the inauguration of Venice to show to the world Venice is not a city anymore but it is a park like this alarm we won here earlier them in Venice well we made the funeral of Venice Venice is dead because there's no more Venetian no more activities for habitants it's only a park how we fight that we started a campaign to show to the tourists respect dentist this is our banner - to stop the people in the street don't in the city because we film you and then you go to youtube and so all the people can watch how much smaller your easy Venice's city council has started a campaign similar to my tears it's banned eating on public squares bathing in the canals and feeding the pigeons all offenses that carry fines of up to 500 euros Matteo helps distribute the posters but all over town the rules are ignored some visitors notice the tourists nuisance as a disinclined you here tourists bellowing in the narrow streets at night so that you can't even sleep if I were a Venetian I don't know what I would do if I constantly had to put up with such inconsiderate behavior from tourists at night the new fashion of this summer is to make sex in the in the sports in the famous sports in Venice we had videos of couples making sex across to the rialto bridge and some taxi drivers made a movie he's not very polarized to make sex at the Rialto Bridge we continue on to cinmarc square where the number of visitors every day exceeds Venice's resident population it's the city's largest and best-known attraction the locals all seem to know one another Caterina sopra Dacia is a qualified tour guide she's annoyed about the devious behavior of other guides in this moment you can see two groups behind really big but they can also have 50 people but they are not really free because at the end of the tour they ask a team and the guides are not qualified guides and they applied to to leave a tip to her so it's only by Kasia so it's absolutely illegal and they don't declare what they gain every day she also tells me there are free tour service providers who charge tour guides for procuring customers the tour guide then has to get the money back from the customer it's a widespread problem we are about 234 guides in the city for each one you haven't to consider at least 7 illegal guides millions of euros per year if we consider all the tours millions of euros in damages for the official guides and for the city Silvia gala introduces me to another group of people trying to tackle the city's problems as part of a citizen's action group Chiara Bharati advises Venetians on how to find housing outside a legal market just the poor people we also can say the me class as we can consider class nowadays but we can say also middle class people that pay rent for 1700 or 800 euros and they cannot pay anymore so they are evicted from the from the of course private owners of the houses Chiara bharata's group helps Venetians to find unoccupied living space if they can no longer afford to rent so this is one of the abandoned houses that we have here in the Indian neighbourhood of the caseta neighborhood and this is abandoned since I think more than 10 years oh you are taller than me so you can open is it ok so you can see you can see inside there is the situation which is the houses that means a completely abandoned and also you don't have some part of the walls so this house need a lot of our reconstruction restoring of course this apartment was once subsidized public housing it belongs to the city and so ultimately to taxpayers how do you fight these kind of places because the neighborhood the the neighbors say there was that are empty they doesn't want they have the apartment in their block because it's of course to have people that live inside the house is keeping all the block in good condition of course because if you have empty apartment like these you have a lot of cold in the winter that come inside water that ruins the walls and she tells me that the city is no longer interested in finding new tenants for such apartments the only thing they do when you abandon a house is to broke all the stuff that make the house livable so maybe as you can see the sink or the other supplies of the of the bathroom or of the kitchen so you cannot have any more the easy way to live inside tourist demand for accommodation in Venice has led to skyrocketing rents an average wage earner can no longer afford market prices single parents and young families are hardest hit they try all the all the way to like legal way of course because occupation is not a little way but they try all the legal way or the situational way to have some support for the rent something something like this the last choice for the people is to occupy of course because it's not a easy choice for a family to say ok I I want to do this I wanna fight for this because that they say they don't have money to restrict to rate restore the house but I have money to threw away like Mozy and all the things they do nothing for for the city really and even for the people if the rental housing supply has dried up why isn't the city offering help you can water simply terrain take a stammer Venice is 800 million euros in debt for a city that much in the red it's extremely important not to spend even more money on subsidies Oak wanted austerity helps just not the people in need I want to gauge the extent of the problem and how much the city is to blame the whole Venice you have a lot of empty apartments that are public apartments hundreds so they prefer to close the abandoned houses they just put some gate in front of the doors because it's cheaper than to give these houses to a family because they have to fix it many locals do the repairs themselves out of their own pocket and move in as illegal squatters Chiara Bharati takes me to Patricia's apartment she is a masseuse who's lived here for four years she did all the renovations but aren't you afraid of that there's people going to kick you out afraid not they try every six months and lost to come over and say okay yeah to get off I don't want to get off so they give you six months more it's funny though because we within a lot of people downstairs when they are comes away we stop the eviction we have a table also with the municipality last month we met the chief of the other women the chief of the region so for them it's not easy to pick up one no bus we have in Venice we have like six eviction per days in all Venice not just the island all Venice meaning like six people are kicked out of their apartments every day yes but of course it's not with the police or all the eviction some someone of course choose to to go away before because it's also dignity a problem you know for the families to go away with policemen or something else so basically we're talking about thousands of people don't have that problem yes there is thousand people that have a housing problem here and as I discover it's not the only serious threat to the people of Venice a menace that no City resident can escape glides into the lagoon at dawn if the locals call them the monsters cruise ships more than 500 hulking big ships call every year they bring masses of people and above all problems [Music] tomaso catchy re spearheads public opposition to the cruise liners when the boat passes and these this water moves from the both it's like tsunami you get a scientific definition of tsunami is a mass of water that moves finds shallow and the wave come up so this big mass of water once that have been pushed against the walls of our city is going back and so this movement that sucks the water sucks what keeps the stones of Venice together from inside and if you want to take back to Germany a stone of Venice you can I don't know probably this one a greater problem still the toxic fumes spewed by the 300 meter long behemoths a team of international observers measures pollution levels Naboo is a German environmental group that monitors the negative impact of emissions in cruise and ferry terminals around the world two of its experts are here today this is a value that would be typical in downtown Berlin five thousand or five thousand five hundred is the reading you'd normally take in a city center with heavy traffic haze but here we're in an open space with no ships around that means there's a high concentration of pollutants from ship emissions a myth you own differ on somebody's feschi mascots and as soon as it docks the engine responsible for propulsion is shut down but the second engine is kept running all day long to supply power back there where all the cruise ships are birthed each one is tantamount to a small power station and these power stations run unfiltered all day long and the wind blows their emissions directly into the city nine if it wasn't we know that particulate matter from ship emissions is linked to respiratory as well as party of Euler disease exposure to fine particulate matter is also associated with dementia and even obesity there's a big health risk for people living in such heavily polluted areas to politicians the stability of the city's foundations and public health are secondary concerns what counts is business the cruise industry generates four to five thousand jobs some people say they bring lots of money to the city this is a lie if you take a balance sheet of a Cris company you see that half of their profit is made by the ticket and half of their profit is made by inside shopping it's a system it's like if you bring a big mole in a small town and you say no we will bring money to the local to the small shops no you're killing the small shops because it's a system to keep all the money inside the ship the ships leave nothing behind for the city and its residents except pollution it can be detected even here at the Rialto Bridge in the heart of this car-free city the experts measure increased sulfur dioxide levels emitted by ships moored in the port one and a half kilometers away of course this is hazardous for the environment and the monuments that are so crucial to Venice the emissions contain sulfur and nitrogen oxides which corrode limestone the water causes more erosion and damage which needs to be repaired or the structures will collapse across Venice pollution levels are as high as in any major city during rush hour only here no one can tell the vision guns Canova's we know exactly how to fix the problem and that is to switch from heavy fuel oil to cleaner fuels and to install exhaust technology particulate filters and nitrogen catalysts we've had euro-6 emission standards for cars trucks and buses for years it's the norm for land vehicles but the same rules don't apply to sea vessels and that's simply unacceptable we took measurements on ships that have filters pollution levels drop by 99.99% the reading in the exhaust was lower than in the ambient air the technology works so why is it not used because it costs money they don't want to spend they'd rather kill people an accusation directed at Venice ports private operator where my request for an interview is declined [Music] tomaso catchy ari has been waiting years for answers but over the course of time he has acquired deep knowledge of the port's business model [Music] that we are talking about 60 70 80 even 100,000 euros for every stop are going to a private company that it's called VTP vents terminal passage ad that is now owned by the same cruise companies and from Turkish financial company that's called global based in Istanbul this is a very Italian paradox that a public company makes a private company that's owned by strangers in this case stranger companies foreign companies that are getting all the money the nation's regularly rally against the cruise ships activists say it's the only way to make their voices heard today no grande navi no large ships is staging a protest headed by Tommaso they're being joined by activists from more than 30 other groups though the going can get rough sometimes police beat us sometimes again we have trials but we don't care we go we go on because we are on the right side and we are winning Chiara Bharati from the grassroots group of squatters is also here because the issues of tourism affected the housing problem and also an environmental problem and the money that the minister decided to spend to increase tourism and to increase the infrastructure his money that they don't put in the house in the housing problem the housing issue in in Italy intro all Italy not only Venice the city's residents want to drive home the message that Venice is their city with their boats they are staking their claim to the city's waterways Silvia Ghana has also come along we've to mogera and there's a project under consideration there to allow the biggest cruise ships to dock fast so I'll be fighting on both fronts one in Venice and one in mogera my workload has doubled I was hoping to simplify my life by moving but it's not working out that way [Music] the demonstrators have 30 boats which they position to block the cruise ships path into the city these types of protests have broad support among the locals we had a referendum it was a self-managed self-proclaim referendum had no legal value but 18,000 people chose to vote against the big ships and show their support for us so I say the majority of towns do not want them the protest has been underway for more than five hours then I hear the demonstrators have scored an initial victory today the big ships just more around the corner is refusing to leaving by to leave by daylight like it's supposed to do have decided to leave by nighttime and so has communicated their passengers that if they want they are free to collect their luggage and leave the ship and they'll get a refund on they're very expensive ticket so small people a big impact already a small triumph that keeps demonstrators motivated to continue their protest into the night they use their boats to block the canal and stalk the giant pleasure boats even though the passengers themselves can't solve the Venetians problems at some point desperation and helplessness turn to anger police boats appear and close off the port in an attempt to shield the ships passengers from the site of the demonstration later in the night a cruise ship steamed through after all the protesters are loud and clear four kilometers away Matteo Seki is celebrating at his local bar today he received word that he can stay on at his job through the winter season but he still hasn't found a new apartment for his family you know the life is so strange that you can you can find nothing for three mouths and then in today's you find everything so it's important don't don't give up and ask the residents of Venice feel like a tight-knit family social life takes place in public matteo Seki can't imagine abandoning his hometown another part of the streets and cars if you live vanished you river the water the wall King the bowels and you go in the mainland with the cars it's like a Indian of United States ago to live in a in Manhattan for 1600 years Venetians have been defending their city against the water and from literally going under residents say they won't give up the fight now the Italian government has banned cruise ships from the historic city center from 2019 but diverting them to mogera is a half-hearted solution and one that does nothing to address overcrowding pollution or to protect the lagoon you

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 1,631,552

Keywords: documentary, Venice, Italy, travel, tourism, pollution, gentrification, DW, DW Documentary, Documentary 2018, mass tourism, mass tourism documentary

Id: aHNWZ018ln8

Length: 42min 26sec (2546 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 02 2018