Admission tickets - a change is possible

by Gabriele Montecorboli, Associazione Nazionale Autotrasporto Viaggiatori (ANAV), Italy

Once again, the eternal problem of admission tickets for tour buses entering art cities has made the news. Triggering the debate was a recent decision by Venice's Municipal Executive Committee that introduced several changes to the fee system already in place, making it prohibitively expensive, to say the least. 

While these "expensive tickets" show a preference for buses with low pollutant emissions, they are clearly intended to reduce the number of tour buses entering Venice.

The decision, approved without consulting tour operators, is surprising, to say the least, because the introduction of the "paid entry permit" as a tax on entering Venice has not resulted in any better reception for tourists who arrive by bus, from the provision of any kind of structures to the supply of informational material.

The City of Venice's motives as they appear in the February resolution state that "it is appropriate to encourage the reduction of tour buses entering the municipality that transport persons who do not reside there even occasionally to the accommodation facilities located there.  It is appropriate to discourage a drop in tourism during the so-called high season by guaranteeing a greater distribution of tourist flows throughout the year, for reasons which include reducing peaks of air pollution." The Italian association ANAV (national association for road transport of travelers) appeared before the City of Venice several times to urge a change in the Plan, and succeeded in reducing the fee for admission tickets for buses whose destination is an accommodation facility, that is a hotel.

Although we are well aware of the need to cover increased costs to the local community due to the influx of tourists, and that tourists have a significant affect on municipal cleaning and maintenance services, we find it very difficult to understand why the city Administration feels it can only solve the problem by passing on the costs to the weakest part of the tourism industry.

Any provision aimed at introducing "purpose taxes" should be general in nature, so that it does not discriminate against tourists who arrive in buses, compared to those who choose to use their own vehicles or other means of transport such as trains, planes, or, in Venice's case, even ships.

Why does a tourist who arrives in Venice on a cruise ship not pay a higher tax, while those who arrive by bus must?

This is reminiscent of certain medieval tolls that were once exacted from people traveling from one territory to another.

We are truly running the risk of returning to that era, because municipal administrations in general have failed to sufficiently consider the balance between public and private interests when adopting such provisions. By adopting these provisions, we end up directly affecting economic sectors, and this should require a complete, in-depth examination that sufficiently highlights the adequacy of the provision compared to the intended objective.

The motives expressed by the municipal administration reveal an extreme superficiality in evaluating the private interests that are so greatly impacted by the adoption of the act, and show no criterion of congruity or specificity, things that become even more necessary when they significantly affect and interfere with freedom of competition and the market.   

Doubtless, as in the case of Venice, there is a need to regulate the influx of tour buses and bus parking, including by restricting their numbers.

But this goal can be achieved by planning access and not by means of a "paid entry permit" solely for buses.

The problem of providing tourists the opportunity to enter and use historic centers, which is common to all cities that have an important past, is multifaceted and involves international and local accessibility, penetrability of the center, transferring means of transport, tour routes, and overlapping functions that must be resolved structurally, through provisions that restore equity for everyone who enters the city.

The architectural, historic and cultural heritages of our cities are not the exclusive property of those who live there, but a general heritage that every citizen should be able to benefit from regardless of income or place of residence.

To strike a blow at mass tourism with proposals that run counter to essential principles that consider cities to be a common good that belongs to everyone, is not only of doubtful constitutionality, but it may cause operators to lose large market shares, creating serious problems in competing with other European cities, with consequent economic harm and risks of unemployment.

As someone has noted, the decisions made not only impede freedom of movement, but they also introduce an absurd principle that a citizen of another city must pay to go to Venice, while a resident of Venice need pay nothing to go to the first city. For any taxation to be accepted, it must represent consideration for a service.

It does not seem as if the City of Venice has plans to improve the services offered to tourists or visitors.

If Venetian administrators intend to introduce a system to encourage a more balanced influx of tourists that is more compatible with the fragility of Venice, it would be much more productive to design a general strategy with the entire tourist industry for the purpose of seeking solutions that everyone can agree to.

We firmly believe that every city has its own story. While on one hand some need to regulate the influx of tour buses within historic centers, other smaller cities want to ensure that they make money through revenues based on imposing high fees for tour buses that stop in the city.

In Italy, some municipalities, especially in Tuscany, such as San Giminiano, Pisa and Lucca, have for years charged a special fee for bus parking.  Unfortunately, many municipal administrations are copying their actions. This is what happened in the town of Castelgandolfo near Rome, where the Pope's summer residence is located. Here as well, an expensive ticket was introduced for tour bus parking. Instead of paying based on the surface area occupied (a bus should pay no more than three automobiles), they are required to pay based on the type of vehicle. Thus, a bus is forced to pay 20 euros per hour and 50 euros for the entire day.

Buses are forced to pay extremely high fees to bring a tour through art cities in Tuscany.  The costs are clear: Florence €230, Pisa €60, Siena €100, San Giminiano €60, Volterra €25, Lucca €26, total €501. And this doesn't include overnight garaging for the bus, perhaps in the hotel parking area.

The question of a tax in the form of admission tickets to cities was first addressed in Florence in 1996, when the municipal administration, in an effort to combat so-called "here today, gone tomorrow" tourism, chose to regulate access not by introducing a sort of set number, but rather by means of a high tax on bus parking aimed at reducing their presence.   But the introduction of the ticket did not solve the problem. While on one hand there were fewer buses, the Plan ended up diverting a large number of tourists to other means of transport, such as trains, for example.

The Florence model was then adopted by Rome during the Jubilee.

Resolution 157 of May 7, 1999 approved a program for the Jubilee that would manage tour bus parking and traffic.
The Plan was created due to the need to regulate the significant influx of pilgrims who were expected to come to Rome.  Its peculiarity was that all tour buses arriving in Rome were required to register with special check points located in the perimeter of the large ring road that circles the city of Rome, along several main thoroughfares entering the city, and to stop in specific parking areas.

At first the Plan offered no possibility for buses to enter the historic city center, a vast area delimited by the Aurelian walls.

We should note that the center of Rome is quite large, and the Aurelian walls have a perimeter of about 20 kilometers, with a diameter of about six and a half kilometers.  The idea was to move the pilgrims inside the city through specially created bus lines (the so-called J lines). Because a call for tenders was announced to manage these lines, you can understand the interests at play here.  Only through the constant work of IRU (International Road Transport Union) and ANAV was it possible to obtain exceptions which, though expensive, made it possible for buses to make limited trips to the historic center.

To limit tour bus access, the traffic code was even amended for that period, and administrative fines for parking tickets and driving in restricted traffic areas were increased by 500%. All this ended up creating a huge drop in travel to Rome, which was also due to the significant increase in prices.  Thus, from the economic perspective, the Jubilee proved to be a failure.

According to the City Council, a recently approved new plan to regulate traffic in Rome is designed to keep the volume of traffic entering Rome essentially the same, using an effective system of regulating traffic flow.

Compared to the previous Plan, the new system of rules is based on a different concept of parking: for anyone who does not have a private parking space within the municipality of Rome, each entry permit includes a parking space in parking lots provided by the system, with various characteristics and functions depending on the location:

• Short term parking: supports bus stop areas and is located in central zones: a bus that purchases a permit to enter and stop in the ZTL1 may let its passengers out and park for an hour at a short term parking lot, then return to pick up the tourists at the selected stop.
• Transfer parking: located along the edges of the ring road that runs around the city.
• Nearby parking: located close to the city center.

The new Plan intends to apply air pollution regulations to tour buses, by prohibiting entry to Euro 0 buses and providing large discounts to those who utilize Euro 4 buses.

The problem is that the Plan introduced a new fee system, making a distinction between undertakings with a garage outside the Municipality of Rome and undertakings with a garage inside the Municipality of Rome.  The differences are quite significant, because they mean a difference of 350% in subscriptions, as they impose a parking area on undertakings that do not have one, thus ending up generating unfair competition among operators.  Because we believe that Rome's decision to favor those who have a garage within the city limits is completely unreasonable and arbitrary and strikes at those who come from outside the city, who are forced to buy permits that are much more expensive that what local operators must pay, the Association filed a complaint against the provision before the Administrative Court. In fact, we believe that according to the general principles of EU law, provisions must not affect citizens' freedom to engage in competition.  Through this provision, the municipal Administration, exercising its authority to regulate limited-traffic zones, in fact gravely and significantly affects market competition.

According to constitutional and EU principles in this area, the freedom of competition among undertakings has, as we know, a dual purpose: on one hand, it supplements the freedom of economic initiative that is the equal right of all entrepreneurs, and on the other it is aimed at protecting the general public, as the existence of a variety of competing undertakings helps improve product quality and contain prices.
This system also ends up causing true economic crises for small companies that cannot afford to pay such high rates.

The result is that tourists are forced to suffer, as they are left far from the areas of interest and must either walk or take public transportation.    

All this is making Italy less and less popular as a travel destination. These restrictive decisions, which have now been overly modified and reformulated, always to the detriment of those who bring in flows of tourists, certainly do not contribute to relaunching the tourism economy and in fact result in large market losses.

As it is not possible to remove art cities from the tourism media, we need to find a solution. What is it? Perhaps making everyone pay a fair price. Unfortunately, at least in Italy, the problem cannot be resolved at the national level, as Italian law gives city mayors full authority over the issue. So we need to create an opportunity to meet with the public authorities, bringing everyone from the tourism industry to the table. The social impact of tourism and the additional services it requires are significant, but the contribution that tourism makes to the economy of a city is also significant.  It creates a paradox: what would art cities be without tourism?

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