Analyzing the Evolution of Commerce in Venice

Tourism has been blamed for the recent closings of local Venetian stores. However, this is an open question. SmartDest, a European research initiative, explores the relationship between tourism, commerce, housing, and mobility in major cities. This project, in partnership with Venetian benefit organization SerenDPT, contributes to SmartDest by providing a fully updated inventory of all retail and hospitality businesses in Venice. We improved an existing mobile application to record shop data collected through direct observation, noting and analyzing shop types, location, target customer, and trends in turnovers. This application and database provides a baseline for more detailed future analyses of commerce trends in the historic city.