Where to stay in Venice, Italy? A quick guide for the responsible visitor

‘Where to stay in Venice?’ is actually also one of the most common questions people ask us! And we are honored by it.

You may wonder why people don’t just look at ratings and review when deciding where to stay in Venice. Well, there’s a simple but very serious reason for it.

Many of you ask us where to stay in Venice, because you want to make sure not to hurt Venice by staying at the wrong place!

In fact, many of you have heard about the issues the city and the locals are facing due to mass tourism and illegal rentals. Therefore, many of you understand that a place might be “bad” even if reviews are “good”.

Therefore, we created this quick guide to help you find where to stay in Venice in a way that is good for you and doesn’t hurt the local community.

Related: Why tourism in Venice is doing more harm than good and what we can do about it

At Venezia Autentica we’re committed to be close to our community and to help everyone maximize their positive impact in Venice.

Many of you sent us e-mails telling us you feel very confused about where to stay in Venice. In fact, many of you wonderful people want to support the local population but are afraid you might end up hurting it instead!

This article gives you pointers and tips to help you find the right accommodation. You deserve to find a place you like and to know you are not contributing to the local housing crisis.

“My husband and daughter and I will be in Venice in___. I’ve rented an apartment for us through ____, but I’m starting to wonder if it’s a legal or illegal rental… The owner apparently lives in ____, which seems like a bad sign. But in our communications, she did mention the Venice city tax that is payable upon check-in, which seems like a good sign…? I guess my question is, without asking the owner, how would I know if the rental is legal or not? I certainly don’t want to be part of the problem in Venice.  So far, I’ve only paid a deposit, and I have until ____ to cancel and get a full refund. We would prefer to stay in an apartment rather than a hotel…but how does one make sure they’re looking at legal apartment rentals in Venice? Any advice you can give me would be much appreciated. “

A lot has been said locally and internationally about the damages caused by the giants of the sharing economy such as Airbnb on local housing markets.

People are going as far as condemning such services at all. These services are said to be THE reason for which cities are suffering.

Allow us to have a slightly different opinion.

We are not convinced that Airbnb, HomeAway, etc. are the issue per se. In fact, they can even be an essential extra revenue stream for some people.

In fact, since many rewarding jobs are being lost, some people rent a room or an apartment to make some extra money and have the means to remain in their city.

For decades, visitors around the world could choose to stay in a hotel, in a pension, and also in an apartment.

However, in more recent years, a growing number of people feel that deciding to stay in an apartment is bad. This is mainly due to the birth and growth of powerful short-term rental booking platforms.

However, we believe that the problem is not so much the existence of booking platforms, but rather the use that some people or agencies make of them.

This is why we believe that it would be wrong to label booking platforms as good or as evil.

It is important to acknowledge that booking platforms have the power to allow residents to rent a room or an apartment and have an extra income which helps them to keep on living in their city.

Of course, also renting to a local family provides the apartment owner with an income.

However, the increasing cost of living and the lack of jobs in Venice has sometimes made the rent of one apartment the only source of income of some families.

In such cases, renting to tourists rather than to a local might help the owner to continue living in Venice.

Expecting a local family who depends on renting a flat to rent it to a local, even if that would not provide them with enough money to keep on living in the city, would be nonsense.

As mentioned above, sometimes short-time rentals can help a local family to keep on living in their city.

However, the lack of regulations also makes short-time rentals a very profitable business for investors.

As a consequence, a growing number of people invests in Venice for the sole purpose of buying apartments and renting them to tourists.

Investors include ‘agencies’ commissioned by investment funds, for example, to buy and rent to tourists many apartments at a time.

This takes an entire pan of the housing and rental inventory out of the residential market,  and drives up the cost of housing and renting.

This definitely constitutes a crucial problem for the local community, since “regular” people no longer can find affordable places where to live.

You can read more about the problems brought by booking platforms giants such as Airbnb to touristic cities on this BBC article.

We are also aware that, because of a lack of rules, housing would be a problem even without booking platforms.

In fact, in Venice, new services and agencies offering tourist rentals are born every day.

As a consequence, investors and agencies would exploit the current situation regardless of the existence or booking platforms.

We actually wonder if booking platforms aren’t, in some cases, helping a local family to manage their flat instead of handing it, for a smaller return, to agencies.

You understood it, we are not against tourist rentals per se.

We are, of course, against the exploitation of the current situation. Some players, in fact, make great returns at the expense of a wide part of the local population.

We hope that new regulations will be introduced and enforced to protect residents. However, we believe they should not block short-term rentals completely.

Regulations should impede exploitation, not prohibit entirely one of the remaining revenue streams of the local population.

In fact, when we travel we often rent apartments ourselves.

We believe that staying in an apartment is a great way to feel like a local and to help the people we’re renting from. This is why we always make sure we stay at a local’s place.

Also, we enjoy doing groceries and cooking in our temporary flat’s kitchen. Indeed, staying in an apartment allows us to spend locally even more than we would do staying at a hotel.

As a consequence, we completely understand your desire to stay in an apartment.

As you understood, we don’t think it’s bad of you to stay in a flat, rather than in a hotel room. However, when doing so, there are few red flags though that you should look out for.

Knowing them should prevent you from renting from the wrong person…

In a world where many are trying to maximize their personal profit at the cost of everything, us consumers have a huge responsibility. We need to learn to make the right choice, with limited information available, and we need to learn to buy responsibly.

When it comes to finding a place where to stay in Venice, there is no foolproof solution. However, these 3 rules are a good start.

Extra tip: Once you know the address of your flat, you can look it up on the City’s map of authorized accommodations. All apartments MUST be registered.

Related: Venice Townhall’s Map of authorized accommodation facilities

This is it, as ‘simple’ as that. Obviously, these 3 tips couldn’t be perfectly full proof but by making the effort to try and check that the apartment you are looking to stay at does meet these criteria you’re doing an awesome job at helping tourism and residency cohabit in a more balanced way. The rest is in the hand of the institutions and regulators…

Since you care about Venice and the impact you make on the local community, make sure to check out the following resources. They will help you have a great time in Venice while supporting the locals!

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