POSTCARD FROM VENICE - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 60

Donna Leon is the author of a mystery series set in Venice. Guido Brunetti, the series'
fictional hero, is a police detective who knows the vaporetto schedule by heart as well as
the best trattoria in any neighborhood. In the series, the waters lapping the canals are both
welcoming and menacing as Brunetti solves crimes despite endemic corruption and mod-
ern intrusions, like tourism. In the novel A Noble Radiance, Brunetti says: “I remember
when, for a few thousand lire, you could get a good meal at any trattoria or osteria in the
city: risotto, fish, a salad and good wine. Nothing fancy, just the good food that the owners
probably ate at their own table. But that was when Venice was a city that was alive, that
had industry and artisans. Now all we have is tourists, and the rich ones are accustomed
to fancy stuff like this. So to appeal to their tastes, we get food that's been made to look
pretty.”
A few months after our trip we attended a reading by Donna Leon from her latest
book—the twentieth of the series. During the question period I asked her to expound a bit
on why she writes about tourism as if it were a major problem for Venice.
“It's at the top of the list of problems of anyone who lives in Venice,” she answered. “It
has changed everyone's life.”
Then she recited all of the environmental, social, cultural and financial problems tour-
ism has caused, problems that were now familiar to Bill and me: the homes that are now
hotels, the dwindling populations, lost industries, lost jobs and the damage from cruise
ships, including the pollution from the engines left idling for power.
“Living in Venice now is like living in a parking lot,” she said. “And the city says cruise
ships cause no damage.”
“So of course people who don't benefit from tourism are distressed at how the city bends
over backwards every way it can for tourism,” she said, pointing out that there are “perks”
to be had by playing along with the industry while publicly claiming to do all that is ne-
cessary to limit tourism.
A member of the audience called out that Venice had no choice, that tourism was its
only industry.
Leon shot back: “In a way that's like saying to a drug addict mainlining heroin that it's
the only life he knows.”
Like a drug addiction, she said, the Venetian addiction to tourism was gradual, over
three decades, as bit by bit tourism was given special treatment by politicians that led to
the disappearance of other businesses and a dramatic rise in costs so that Venice today is
“virtually an unlivable city for the average person.”
“Venetians who own tourist enterprises—they favor it,” she said. She does not: “I think
of tourism in terms of drug addiction. It's too late now. It's the only industry.”
And as anyone who reads her books knows, Donna Leon has a special passion against
those cruise ships.