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Comment by ivanhoe | Hacker News Reader

Well, for people living there it's how they pay their bills, so for them it's very practical economical problem. And not just them, the whole Veneto region in fact lives from tourism, and Venice is their main attraction, so they all heavily depend on it. Even here in Istria (Croatia) many people live from organizing boat tours to Venice, so the economical impact of these changes goes even beyond just Italy.

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Tourism is a completely different thing from the market value of the home you live in.

I visited once and stayed well away from the center. It didnt look like anyone much actually did live there - which makes sense, if you owned an apartment it seems you were better off renting it to tourists and moving to mestre.

> the whole Veneto region in fact lives from tourism

This has.not been true for more than 30 years. Veneto is the heartland of the original Benetton, a heavily industrialised region, the engine of the Italian North-East economic mini-boom of the 80s/90s (based on low-cost manufacturing). In fact, there is a massive duality between the tourism industry in Venice and the economy of the mainland, which is markedly reflected in politics (Venice tends to elect leftist mayors, while Veneto as a whole is very rightwing).

Losing the tourism industry would definitely be a blow to the economy, but Veneto would survive economically just fine.

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