CNN
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Venice, Italy, can expect to reap a $1.1 billion reward from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s controversial, star-studded wedding, according to Italy’s Tourism Ministry.
The ministry said Friday that the event, which has been met with fierce pushback from some Venetians, could provide a boost of almost 68% of the city’s annual tourism turnover.
The three-day wedding, reportedly costing up to $55 million, has kept Venice hotels and other businesses busy.
Despite the economic boost, protesters have rallied against the nuptials of Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the third richest person in the world, and Lauren Sanchez, a former TV reporter, with one banner reading “No space for Bezos,” and a tarp from Greenpeace that read: “If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax.”
“We need to abandon the controversy and focus on opportunities,” said Daniela Santanchè, the minister of tourism in Italy, in a news release. “This is not just a private event, but a concrete driving force for the entire sector. Venice has all it takes to transform it into an opportunity for relaunch and promotion.”
The 200 wedding guests include A-listers Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Brady and Kim and Khloe Kardashian.
The more than $1 billion economic boost is about a quarter of what pop singers Taylor Swift and Beyoncé managed in the United States over their months-long tours.
In 2023, Michael Grahn, then-chief economist of Danske Bank, cited Beyonce’s “Renaissance” tour as a contributor to inflated hotel and restaurant prices in Stockholm. The tour added more than $4.5 billion to the US economy, according to a 2023 analysis of concertgoers’ spending by research firm QuestionPro.
Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour, which ran for nearly two years and hosted 152 concerts in 51 cities, wrapped up last December as the highest-grossing tour of all time. The tour’s economic impact totaled roughly $5 billion in the United States, according to an estimate by QuestionPro. But that total only took into account direct spending, according to the US Travel Association, which estimates Swift’s total impact likely exceeded $10 billion when factoring in indirect spending and when non-ticket holders make purchases outside of venues.
The $1.1 billion coming from the Bezos-Sanchez wedding is more than the $1 billion Las Vegas generated from the 2024 Super Bowl.
Italy has hosted other high-profile weddings, including in 2014 with Kim Kardashian-Kanye West in Florence and Amal Alamuddin-George Clooney in Venice.
