MILAN (AP) — Venice city officials said Friday that the day-tripper tax raised 2.4 million euros ($2.6 million) during a test phase this summer, and that decisions on how to proceed will be made in the fall after a full analysis of the data.

According to the city, the €5 tax was paid 485,062 times during the 29 test days, mainly on weekends and holidays, from April 25 to July 14. The final figures include paper tickets sold to bus tours, cruise ships and some tour operators, accounting for around 1,000 tickets on each of the test days.

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Italians accounted for 60% of the ticket website’s visitors during that period, followed by Americans, Germans and French, with shares ranging from 6.5% to 4%.

City officials have indicated that the system, where day-trippers pay an entrance fee, will be expanded next year, with the price doubling to 10 euros, at least on some days, but they have not made any direct announcements about this.

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said the city would consider adjusting the fee based on whether the tax is paid in advance or at the last minute. He defended the tourist tax against critics who called it a failure because it allegedly did not deter arrivals as intended.

“We listened to citizens, associations, thousands of people, but in the end there were no alternative solutions to ours,” Brugnaro said. “We thought we had to take this path of controls, which were light enough, not invasive.”

Visitors who were not staying at accommodation in the city were required to download a QR code to prove they had paid the tax; officials said the transaction took an average of two minutes. Hotel guests, who pay an accommodation tax, were exempt, as were people living in the Veneto region, visitors under 14 and people visiting relatives, among others.

Venice has long struggled with overtourism, city officials say, with an estimated 25 to 30 million day trippers and overnight guests arriving each year, a figure roughly confirmed by mobile phone data tracked in a Smart Control Room since 2020.

The day-tripper tax, postponed due to the pandemic, was welcomed by UNESCO member states when they decided not to accept the recommendation to place the city on the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger. The city had escaped inclusion two years earlier when it imposed a ban on cruise ships via the Giudecca Canal and the San Marco Basin.

The city’s top tourism official, Simone Venturini, said the entrance fee marks “a cultural revolution”.

“For the first time in the world, a city has a tool that finally allows us to have clear data, not just approximate estimates, not longer interpretations of data, but exact data” of people moving in and out of the city, he said.

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This story has been corrected to reflect that Italians made up 60% of the ticket website’s visitors, not 60% of Venice’s visitors.