Venice starts charging day-trippers to stop by the island

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It will cost you a small fee to eat, pray, and/or love in Venice this summer. Day-trip visitors must pay a little over $5 to visit the historic city starting today, making it the first major city to charge this kind of entrance fee.

The surcharge comes after numerous warnings that the city’s infrastructure cannot support the overtourism it’s experiencing. UNESCO even threatened to put Venice on its list of endangered heritage sites if local authorities didn’t make changes.

• The new fee targets single-day visitors, who account for about three out of every four tourists to the city but contribute less than 20% to total tourism spending.

• Some critics think the fee violates Italy’s constitutional right to freedom of movement, while others say it doesn’t go far enough because a measly 5-euro fee won’t make a dent in the nearly 30 million people who visit Venice every year.

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Big picture: The Floating City isn’t the only travel hot spot attempting to limit tourists. Other destinations have raised tourist taxes, and Barcelona even removed a popular bus route from map apps so tourists stop clogging up public transit.