(16 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Venice, Italy – 15 June 2025
1. Venetian gondolas moored, boat crossing canal in background
2. Protesters unfurling a banner in a Venice canal against new hotel opening
3. View of a Venice canal by train
4. Various of boats with tourists crossing canals
5. Banner held by protesters on a boat reading (Italian): “Stop hotels, more cities."
6. Activist Giacomo Salerno looking at his smartphone UPSOUND (Italian): “Here we are in Palazzo dei Guardiani”
7. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Giacomo Salerno, activist:
“This is the Calle dei Guardiani complex that was taken over by Delta Real Estate. When it was taken over there were 18 apartments inside. It had also been a public housing complex in the past, then it had several changes of ownership. Delta Real Estate took it over and evicted the last remaining resident tenant, among other things, starting renovation work while the elderly resident was still inside. From 18 apartments they took over 33 units, all for tourist rentals.”
8. Various of gondolas with tourists onboard and waterbuses crossing the canals
9. Protesters holding banner in front of a hotel on Tronchetto island
10. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Giacomo Salerno, activist:
“This is the first Hampton by Hilton chain hotel to open. 648 beds on an island that was one of the few places of potential urban transformation and could have hosted public investment to implement services for residents, which this city notoriously lacks.”
11. Tourists aboard a boat crossing a city canal
STORYLINE:
In Venice, a couple of dozen protesters unfurled a banner Sunday calling for a halt to new hotel beds in the lagoon city in front of two recently completed structures, one in the popular tourist destination’s historic center where activists say the last resident, an elderly woman, was kicked out last year.
“They started the construction work while she was still inside,’’ said Giacomo Salerno of the OCIO housing activist group that organized the protest.
“She paid her rent regularly, and up until today she still hasn’t found a place to live.’’
Organizers underlined that nearly 17,000 tourist beds had been added to the city of Venice since 2017 despite a “hotel block” in the historic center adopted that year by the city.
According to Ocio, there are 58, 310 tourist beds – both hotels and short-term rentals – in Venice’s historic center and lagoon islands, and a total of 84,628 taking into account the Venetian mainland.
The protesters highlighted the latest examples: The conversion of an apartment building at Calle dei Guardiani from 18 units to 30 short-term rental units exploiting a gray area in the 2017 measure by not being officially registered as a hotel, Salerno said.
The protesters moved unobtrusively from the first stop in Tronchetto, an island not covered by the hotel block, where a 648-room hotel has recently opened and where another is being built, to the Calle dei Guardiani structure.
Details of the protest weren’t advertised, and was kept small and non-confrontational.
”These are probably touristic flows that will block even more the narrow streets of Venice, and contribute to the situation of overtourism already extremely compromised,’’ Salerno said.
AP Video shot by Colleen Barry
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