The prices he suggests are not actually expensive and wouldn't allocate tourist access primarily to the wealthy. Personally I would go higher than that.

Another aspect I'm thinking about is 'motivation'. High prices that require to really think about it and perhaps even to plan in advance also filter visitors according to how much they wanted to visit.

I'm sure some people really dream of visiting Venice once in their life and would be willing to save if needed be in order to do so. On the other hand, there are people who see that Easyjet has 30 euro flights at the moment so decide to go to Venice for the weekend just like that.