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Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

So you are suggesting to allocate tourist access to the city primarily to the wealthy, especially on the most desirable days such as weekends and holidays? The poor can visit on less desirable days?

I don't disagree with that, but we should be clear that this is what is being proposed.

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That's what advance purchase tickets are for. "Think of the poor people!" is not always warranted. Visiting Venice as a tourist is a luxury. Do you think poor people should also be able to park their cars in Manhattan for free?

Maybe these fees should be set by net income or net wealth... Be poor and pay less, be rich and pay factor of 10 to 10000 more...

So then rich people will pay poor people to buy the tickets for them. And that's if you can come up with a way for someone to declare their wealth reliably.

Even ignoring all the overhead that would bring, it's not feasible for a local municipality to do background checks on the net income or wealth of foreign visitors in any way that would be reliable. It would be trivial to bypass this with fake statements.

The burden of oversight for determining income would probably wash out any gains made from taxing higher income people.

When I went to Victoria Falls national park on Zimbabwe, the fees were based on which country’s passport you were presenting. Richer country passport holders had to pay more, poorer country passport holders paid less.

That's not a bad idea!

Like traffic fines in some European countries, but with a lottery system as well if the number of potential visitors is high enough, with no substitution of people to eliminate reseller market for lottery. Some national parks in the USA already have to limit visitors and state and county and local parks in California that I have seen during the pandemic had to put limits on people visiting and a lot of that was free. Most of the US solutions are based on first come first served or reservations with first come first served so equity of any kind is not addressed otherwise.

  > Do you think poor people should also be able to park their cars in Manhattan for free?

No, but I think that they should be allowed to enter Manhattan for free.

This is already not always the case, depending on which bridge they use.

What I've seen in New York is that New York City and/or New York State residents get discounted or free entry (sometimes only on certain days) to various venues. So all these fees could be reduced or eliminated for Italian citizens, who are most likely to be the poor visitors you mention. I think it's fair to expect non-Italians flying or taking the train into Italy to pay more.

Different state. My drivers license says City A. But my taxes go to City B, (they provide police, etc) Geographically this makes sense.

All community centers, pools, camps, etc for both cities refuse to give in-city rates. Since either my license says the wrong city, or my taxes go to the wrong city.

Residents over tourists. It’s that simple.

Tourism at this scale is a modern day privilege, you can some some nice vacations without going to europe’s most crowded island. My best vacation were far from the most expensive one. And my most expensive was one of the worst.

In my town , lots of things are cheaper for the working class of the town. Is this also unfair for the poor tourist, on his break?

The prices he suggests are not actually expensive and wouldn't allocate tourist access primarily to the wealthy. Personally I would go higher than that.

Another aspect I'm thinking about is 'motivation'. High prices that require to really think about it and perhaps even to plan in advance also filter visitors according to how much they wanted to visit.

I'm sure some people really dream of visiting Venice once in their life and would be willing to save if needed be in order to do so. On the other hand, there are people who see that Easyjet has 30 euro flights at the moment so decide to go to Venice for the weekend just like that.

I prefer lotteries. There is probably less revenue to be made but we can't make the beautiful places of the world into rich man's paradises where regular people can't go. Although I am sure a lot of people in power want such a world.

Lotteries make planned travel insanely difficult.

Should locals or tourists pay for all the infrastructure to support the tourists? I think the tourists should pay for it

Probably. I just want to avoid a situation where prices go to a level that only rich people can afford.

That is the pure capitalist solution. Venice is a limited resource that is not being managed well at the moment. Over harvested one could say.

Adding a fee, at some point supply and demand will become balanced. The city will have the max number of tourist it can handle at the max price people are willing to pay. The resource will now be managed correctly.

If the income is absurdly high, then other areas may start expanding out into the sea to provide a similar experience. Giving tourist more options. See Islands of Dubai for example. At some point enough new tourist options are opened that Venice will need to lower fee until a new balance is reached.

Thus tourist have more options and lower prices overall. Wealth has been created.

>If the income is absurdly high, then other areas may start expanding out into the sea to provide a similar experience.

Is this the backstory for the next BioShock game?

Nothing to do with wealth but priority.

People will dine at fine restaurant as a treat. People will travel to the Bahamas as a treat. People will buy a SUV for comfort as a treat.

All those things are luxuries, and have nothing to do with wealth.

What in the world. They already pay probably more than 10x this to fly there.

Venice has been for the rich for 1000 years.

We live in a capitalist society. Anything that costs money pushes away those who don’t have money. The city needs money to support the non-tax paying tourists, you can think of the fee as a tax. I think it’s a good solution even when considering the downside that the fee is only significant for those with less money

>The poor can visit on less desirable days?

We'll have a coupon day, or something.

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