Each day, more than 60,000 people visit Venice - more than the entire population of the city. Of those, an increasing number are from cruise ships; with a 439 percent increase in cruise dockings in the past 15 years, according to statistics from the Venice Passenger Terminal. The fabled Italian port is now the most popular cruise destination in Europe.
It is feared that the sheer number of visitors are damaging the city whose economy is based around them.
"Tourism is a double-edged sword," said Peter Debrine, head of the World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism Programme at UNESCO, in an interview with DW. "You can't have those kind of numbers come into a site and not have a negative impact.