boxes for keys and speakers

Florence gets serious about mass tourism. Like other major destinations, inside and outside Italy, the capital of Tuscany has decided to make a move to alleviate the effects that the avalanche of visitors has on its streets. So far nothing extraordinary. The curious thing is how he did it. Its mayor, Sara Funaro, has just presented a 10-point shock plan with guidelines and some eminently practical measures.

For example, the city will no longer allow guides to use loudspeakers to address their tour groups. Nor do landlords on platforms such as Airbnb install metal boxes for keys in the doors, portals or facades of buildings, a very popular practice to speed up the check-in of the tenants.

A plan with 10 points. At the gates of the G7 tourism ministers’ summit, held last week precisely in Florence, the mayor of the Tuscan capital has presented a decalogue with which she seeks to make the avalanche of visitors more “sustainable” in the city. And that word, “sustainable”, is important: it is repeated almost a dozen times in the statement released by the City Council to announce its 10-point plan.

“The message we want to convey is that we care about our city. We care that Florence can be attractive, but above all livable for its residents,” claims its mayor, Sara Funaro. “With these measures we protect Florence. We have the primary objective of ensuring that our city can maintain its roots, its nature and its identity.”

Goodbye key boxes. Of the 10 guidelines, there are three that are particularly striking and eminently practical with which the City Council seeks to make the effects of its plan immediately visible. The first focuses on small boxes with codes for keys. For some time now it has been common to see them anchored to facades, doors, fences, portals… near points where apartments are rented to tourists through websites such as Airbnb. Its operation is very simple and largely explains its success: after reserving the apartment, the tenant receives a code with which they can open the box and extract the key to the apartment.

Useful tool… and controversial. For hosts, safe deposit boxes are a quick, simple and, above all, cheap way to simplify the check-inbut from now on they will have to think of another way to do it. At least on the exteriors of the buildings located in the historic area of ​​the city protected by UNESCO. The measure has an aesthetic purpose and wants to avoid the proliferation of metal boxes, but it also aims to go further, forcing landlords to present themselves at the time of the check-in and limiting the role of companies that manage dozens of apartments in Florence on behalf of their owners.

To such an extent they have gained visibility in the historic center that in a way the key boxes have ended up becoming a symbol of overtourism in Florence. CNN explains that in some cases they have become a target for acts of vandalism and there are even neighbors who cover them with red adhesive tape to denounce the overcrowding of the city. “If they look like band-aids, it is deliberate: we are trying to cure Florence,” says one of the promoters of the initiative to The Times.

And goodbye, speakers for guides and cars. It is not the only measure they have in mind in Florence. Another equally curious one that shows how tired the City Council is of mass tourism is that it will prohibit guides from using loudspeakers to address their groups. “It is a phenomenon that bothers those who live in our city,” he acknowledges. A similar fate will befall what the local government calls “atypical vehicles”, transportation used by visitors to get around the city. As an example, he cites “golf carts.” In that case, the Florentine Government does not speak of a prohibition, but of establishing certain limitations.

Are there more measures? Yes. The City Council also talks about putting “limits” on tourist rentals, awareness campaigns, collaborating with platforms and greater control of the tourist flow. It is not the first time that the capital of Tuscany has moved in that direction. Just a year ago the city took an even more drastic measure by banning new short-term rentals on websites like Airbnb in its historic center.

As is the case in other major European destinations, even beyond Italy, the balance between vacation and residential use of homes is not always easy: in September a Florentine judge gave a boost to Airbnb by concluding that the right of an owner renting his apartment to tourists prevails over the misgivings of the rest of his neighbors. The sentence is limited to a specific lawsuit that arose in a building on Via Cavour, but comes at a crucial moment.

Is the problem that serious? The data is eloquent. The City Council estimates that between January and September it received more than 7.8 million visitors. About 366,500 people live in the city. If in 2016 just under 6,000 apartments were advertised on Airbnb in the town, last year, when the moratorium was adopted, the supply was already close to 14,400. A more than considerable boom that coincided with a 42% increase in the average cost of residential rentals. A few months ago, a study by HousingAnywehere concluded that Florence is one of the European cities where renting has become more expensive compared to 2023, with a year-on-year increase of 6.3%. Of course, the figure is lower than other cities, such as Madrid or Barcelona.

“The historic center is no longer capable of supporting, without weakening its heritage value and seeing its habitability compromised, such a massive presence of activities and vehicles for exclusively tourist use concentrated in just five square kilometers,” warns the City Council. The last nuance is important because Florence estimates that 95% of the tourism that comes to the city is concentrated in its central and historical almond, of just 5 km2.

Beyond Florence. Florence may be the most recent example, but it is by no means the only city that has taken measures to alleviate the effects of tourist overcrowding.

In Amsterdam they have even launched a campaign to ask visitors who come looking for sex and drugs to “stay away”, in Seoul they have sealed off their historic neighborhood, in Japan they already charge for using the busiest Fuji route and have even installed an “anti-selfie” screen, in Bali they apply a moratorium on new hotels and in New Zealand or Italy itself they have decided to raise taxes to compensate for the costs and impact of tourism. Spain has also not remained immune to moratoriums and neighborhood protests due to saturation of the sector.

Images | Maxime Steckle (Unsplash) and Jonathan Körner (Unsplash)

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