A survey, called “Spazi sottratti alla residenza-Indagine sulle strutture ricettive extralberghiere”,was carried out by the ‘Attività Produttive’ office of the municipality of Venice in 2007. The analysis was aimed in the first place at evaluating the quality level of the ‘non-hotel’ accommodation facilities present in town. Already published by Osservatorio Casa in February 2008, the assessment was also aimed at estimating the impact of these facilities on the urban structure of the city, since this kind of tourist accommodations diminishes the actual number of houses available for the inhabitants. Following a summary of the survey’s outcome.

Furnished Flats
The majority of the furnished flats is located in Castello and San Marco quarters, constituting together half of the total amount of available flats for tourists in the old centre. This data highlights the uneven distribution of tourists facilities throughout the city. The houses available for tourists have been divided depending on their total surface. The vast majority (47,5%) is made up of medium/small apartments, ranging from 50 to 75 square meters, following those ranging from 75 to 100 square meters (20,6%), whereas the very small apartments are 18,7% of the entire amount and the very big apartments amount to 13,2% upon the whole. Double rooms constitute the absolute majority (73,2%) with an average surface of 18,11 square meters, for single rooms the average surface drops down to 11,25 square meters, and bigger rooms with more beds are a bare amount (4,3%). The absolute majority of the apartments has just one bathroom (69,6%), 24,1 % has two bathrooms and the rest of the apartments (6,1) has three or more bathrooms.

Rooms for Rent
This specific kind of accommodation is often operated illegally and in 2006 a series of fiscal verifications forced many facilities to stop their activity. As in the case of the furnished flats the presence of the rooms for rent is not even throughout the city, the average amount of rooms available is higher in Castello, Cannaregio and San Marco quarters. Almost the total amount of the rooms rented has a bathroom (91,1%), the few rooms without bathroom are mostly single rooms (11,4%). Also the rooms for rent were ordered to identify their characteristics and the actual use that is made of them; four types of facilities were identified according to the link between the surface of the rooms and the total area of the apartment.
  type 1 : flats with an average surface of 142,85 square meters, 2,5 beds per room, with a relevant number of rooms with more than one bed and a little number of rooms without bathroom (5,4 %);
  type 2: flats with an average surface of 140,85 square meters, 1,8 beds per room, more than 50% double rooms upon the whole and 9,8% rooms without bathroom;
  type 3: very big apartments with an average surface of 243,85 square meters, 2,1 average amount of bed per room, 72,7 % of the total amount of rooms is made by doubles and 6,5 % of rooms is without bathroom;
  type 4: “apartments” of 414,16 square meters (hotels) ith 2 beds per room, the majority of the rooms are doubles (75,5%), 15,7% of rooms is without bathroom.

Bed & Breakfast Facilities
Unlike other kinds of accommodation many of these facilities can be found also in the inland area of Venice (Mestre and surroundings), if legally operated “bed & Breakfast” facilities have no impact on the city urban structure since they don’t diminish the number of houses available for the inhabitants. “Bed & Breakfast” can also prove very useful to improve the living conditions of the citizens allowing them to live in the centre of town while earning an income from their houses. Overall three kinds of such structures were identified, based upon the number of rooms devoted to the tourist accommodation: The majority of the facilities (38,8%) uses three rooms for accommodation. The apartments used as B&B are prevalently quite big, with an average surface over 100 square meters. Also thanks to the municipal law, prescribing that at least 45 square meters have to be used only by the owner of the house, “Bed & Breakfast” seem to be the structures able to less impact the city’s urban configuration.

Conclusions
First of all we have to recognize that in any case the existing 1.227 non-hotel tourist facilities diminish the availability of houses for the inhabitants. The survey highlighted the presence of entire apartments devoted to tourism that should instead be available as houses for the inhabitants of the old centre. From a general estimate the survey indicated the number of houses “stolen” from the housing market to be around 500, 44% of the whole amount of non-hotel tourist facilities, more in detail:
 66,2% of the furnished flats, apartments with an average surface between 50 and 100 square meters, with one bathroom.
 30% of the apartments used as Bed & breakfast (between those with two or three rooms used for tourist accommodation);
 81,2% of the rooms for rent (type 2 and 3) medium/big apartments with bathrooms.