Venice is looking to woo digital nomads

What if your remote office allowed you to watch the gondolas in Venice go by? Image: Shutterstock

Remote working's large-scale rollout around the world has not only brought about a new way of thinking about how to organize one's time and relationships with a company. Remote workers now constitute a new category of travelers, and it's a category that Venice is interested in attracting to boost its population with a completely different profile of resident.

How would you feel about getting ready for your next meeting, not in an open space, but in the famous Piazza San Marco in Venice? The Serenissima is awaiting you. In fact it has even developed a digital platform to encourage digital nomads to choose it as their new remote office. A symbol of mass tourism, Venice is not only grappling with managing the flow of visitors, which number in the million, it is also suffering from plummeting population numbers. The historic center tallies just 50,000 inhabitants, down from 174,000 in the 1950s, while the population that remains in the heart of this mythical destination is getting significantly older. According to Bloomberg, people in their 50s outnumber those in their 20s and 30s by two to one.

With the pandemic and the general implementation of more or less freewheeling teleworking, Venice is looking to attract a new profile of visitors to boost its local economy: employees authorized to work remotely.

The campaign has been launched and is called "Venywhere," a combination of Venice and "anywhere." For the moment, this program is in a test phase, before being officially rolled out in the fall. The Venywhere.it website allows digital nomads interested in setting up their virtual offices in Venice to identify places in the city where they can connect their computer, and what places they are! Ca' Foscari University, Fondazione di Venezia, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Arsenale di Venezia, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa... These are just some of the cultural and/or historical sites where employees can combine business with pleasure. The message of the site is clear: to transform Venice into a modern city suitable for today's work.

The Venywhere platform also makes it possible to find accommodation and even to organize one's time outside of work by participating in cultural activities.