Water taxi from Marco Polo airport to Venice

Marco Polo airport (code VCE) sits on the mainland, facing the lagoon. The historic centre has no roads: from the airport you either arrive by boat, or take a bus to Piazzale Roma and carry on from that terminus on foot or by vaporetto. This page starts from a concrete question: I’ve landed, I have suitcases and I need to get to a specific address. Which boat do I take, where does it leave from and what will I really pay?

From arrivals to the boat basin: the walk

Water taxis don’t pull up outside the terminal. They leave from the darsena, the airport’s boat basin, which is linked to arrivals by a covered walkway with moving walkways. At a normal pace, pulling a trolley case, allow 7–10 minutes.

The walkway starts from the upper floor of the terminal and isn’t always well signposted: more than one traveller reports having had to hunt for it. Follow the signs for water transport, not the ones for buses (which leave from exit D, on the opposite side).

At the basin, water taxis use moorings separate from the Alilaguna piers. The Alilaguna ticket offices are right in the boat basin; the water-taxi desks, on the other hand, are in the arrivals hall. If you have a voucher, it tells you exactly where to go: read it before you land, not at the baggage belt.

Airport desk or book online

You have two options: go to a desk in arrivals, or arrive with your booking already made.

At the desk. Consorzio Motoscafi Venezia has a ticket office in the arrivals hall. You pay, a member of staff points you to the pier and the boatman loads your luggage. The catch is availability: on peak days one reviewer found the consortium fully booked two days ahead. Turning up at the desk on a summer Saturday evening is a gamble.

Online, direct from the operator. Consorzio Motoscafi and Venezia Taxi sell the transfer on their own websites. At the time of checking, the prepaid price for airport → hotel in the centre was €160 with the Consorzio (up to 4 people and 4 suitcases) and €140 with Venezia Taxi (quote for 2 people). Note that Venezia Taxi only opens online booking from October to March and doesn’t take same-day bookings; the rest of the year you book by phone or email.

Online, through a platform. On GetYourGuide the private water taxi costs €215 per boat, for up to 6 people and, according to the product listing, 8 bags, with free cancellation up to 24 hours before. The night surcharge is not included. It costs more than booking direct, and we’ll say so plainly: in return you get a voucher in a single app, support from the platform and, for groups of 5–6, a price that stays fixed. The comparison by number of passengers is further down.

Four ways into the centre, compared

The water taxi isn’t the only boat. Here are the options in order of price, with what you actually get.

Bus plus the last leg. The ATVO express bus takes about 20 minutes to Piazzale Roma, runs roughly every half hour and carries your luggage in the hold. From there you walk or take the vaporetto (75-minute ACTV ticket, €9.50). It’s a good solution if you’re staying a stone’s throw from Piazzale Roma or the station; for San Marco, with two suitcases, the bridges and the waiting soon add up.

Alilaguna. This is a scheduled service, with low, enclosed boats and many stops. Your ticket covers one piece of hand luggage and one suitcase whose three dimensions add up to no more than 160 cm; each additional item costs €4. The GetYourGuide product “Boat Transfer to/from Marco Polo Airport w/ 3 Routes” is exactly this ticket: handy if you want it on your phone in advance, but it’s still a scheduled waterbus. The full comparison is on our water taxi vs Alilaguna page.

Shared and private water taxis are the subject of the next sections, and of two dedicated pages: the shared water taxi and the private water taxi.

Routes by area: where you land and what you pay

Venice doesn’t have a single “centre”. A hotel on the Grand Canal, one down a Cannaregio alley and one on the Lido are three different journeys, with different fares. The “city” figures come from the Comune di Venezia tariff; the “commercial” ones from operators’ online quotes.

Alilaguna times come from the official summer timetable; for the islands and the Lido, the taxi’s journey time depends on the landing and on traffic in the lagoon, and the operator will tell you when you book. Murano lies halfway between the airport and the city, so the ride is shorter than to the centre.

Three things stand out. First: for the historic centre, the city fare is the same wherever you get off, €110. Second: Lido Santa Maria Elisabetta costs more (€120), Murano much less (€60). Third: for Burano and Torcello the time difference between a taxi and public transport is huge, and a group of 4–6 feels the cost much less. The islands have a page of their own: water taxi to Murano and Burano.

City fare vs commercial prices: why they don’t match

Under the Comune di Venezia tariff (council resolutions 227/2011 and 516/2011), a fixed price of €110 per boat applies between the airport and the historic centre, in either direction. A 20% discount (bringing it to €88) is available to residents and passengers with disabilities.

So why does hardly anyone pay €110? Because the city’s fixed route is a trip between taxi ranks, with surcharges on top. The transfers sold online are commercial products: a boat assigned in advance, drop-off at your hotel, sometimes help at the desk. The price is set by the operator, not by the Comune.

The official surcharges, if you pay the city fare:

• from the fifth person: €5 or €10 per person, luggage included (the fare sheet distinguishes between metered trips and fixed routes in a way that isn’t entirely clear);
• luggage: €3 for every item beyond the fourth and beyond the number of passengers;
• night (22:00–06:00): €10;
• call-out away from a taxi rank: €5.

Operators have their own rules. Consorzio Motoscafi, for example, includes 4 people and 4 suitcases, then charges €10 per person and €5 per suitcase from the fifth, and adds a €15 night surcharge from 22:00 to 07:00. Always ask what’s included before comparing two prices. All the figures are gathered on our water-taxi prices and fares page.

Private or shared: the cost per head

With a private taxi the price covers the whole boat; with a shared one it’s per passenger. Almost every comparison trips up on exactly this. The box below works out the per-head cost of the private boat on GetYourGuide (€215, up to 6 people) against the shared taxi at €39.

Three worked examples:

• Two of you: the private boat on GYG costs €107.50 each, the shared taxi €39. That’s almost €69 more per person for a boat to yourselves and no stops on the way.
• Four of you: €53.75 each against €39. Book direct with Consorzio Motoscafi (€160 for 4 people and 4 suitcases) and it drops to €40 each: practically the price of a shared seat, with no waiting.
• Six of you: €35.83 each. The private boat costs less than the shared one and takes you straight to your hotel.

Against Alilaguna at €18, though, the private boat never wins on price alone: six of you pay €108 in total, against €215. The private taxi earns its keep on time, luggage and door-to-door delivery.

How the shared water taxi from the airport really works

The best-selling shared transfer on GetYourGuide (“Marco Polo Airport Water Taxi Transfer”, over 28,000 reviews, 4.4 stars) is supplied by Bucintoro Viaggi, an agency in the same group as Alilaguna. That’s not a problem in itself, but it’s worth knowing: the company that sells the scheduled waterbus also sells the pricier alternative.

How it goes:

1. You go to the desk shown on your voucher, in arrivals.
2. You wait for the group to form: travellers report waits of 15–25 minutes, and the product listing gives a maximum wait of 40 minutes. There are no fixed departure times.
3. The boat makes several drop-offs: hotels on the Grand Canal, the Hilton Molino Stucky and, for addresses on the inner canals, a meeting point near the hotel.
4. The crossing itself takes 25–35 minutes; door to door, the product states 50–100 minutes. If you’re the last drop-off, expect close to 100.

Guests at the JW Marriott (Isola delle Rose) or San Clemente are dropped at San Marco, near the hotel shuttle. The same kind of service is also sold on Tiqets at the same price (€39); there the duration is given as 30 minutes, which describes the crossing, not the door-to-door time.

A word on luggage: according to the GetYourGuide product listing, the shared taxi includes one bag and one piece of hand luggage per passenger; extra items are charged. Check on your voucher what an extra one costs. The service isn’t suitable for wheelchair users, and in fog or bad weather the boat may be replaced by a car to Piazzale Roma. More detail in our guide to luggage and accessibility.

Flight delayed: what happens to your booking

A delay is the number one worry for anyone who books ahead. The rules aren’t the same everywhere.

• Consorzio Motoscafi (direct booking): says it tracks flights automatically, with no need to let it know. For delayed flights landing between midnight and 07:00, it may take you to Piazzale Roma by road taxi, with the rest of the trip by boat.
• GetYourGuide: the general rule is free cancellation up to 24 hours before and no refund for no-shows. How the supplier handles a delayed flight needs checking on the product listing and on the voucher before you pay; if it isn’t stated, ask through the platform and keep the reply.
• Other resellers: at least one online reseller treats the service as cancelled, with no refund, if you don’t show up within 30 minutes of landing.

In practice: always enter your flight number, save the supplier’s phone number and, if the delay is serious, call them yourself before you land. If you’re arriving late at night, read our night water taxi page: the ATVO bus runs from the airport until about 01:10, while the last Alilaguna Blue Line boat in summer leaves at around 00:20.

Hotels with no water door, tides and the last few metres

Stepping off right at the entrance is only possible at hotels with a water door or a landing the boat can reach. Hotels on the Grand Canal generally have one; those on the inner canals often don’t, or not always.

The tide can also work against you, for opposite reasons. At high water, there’s sometimes not enough clearance under the bridges of the smaller canals. At low tide, the canal may be too shallow, or the hotel’s steps end up too far below the boat’s deck. Whatever the problem, the driver falls back on the nearest reachable landing, usually no more than five minutes’ walk away, and hands you your suitcases.

Practical tips:

• ask your hotel, by email, whether it has a water door usable at all tides;
• check the tide forecast on your arrival day;
• for addresses away from the Grand Canal, be ready to cross at least one bridge on foot, bags in hand.

When the route runs through the inner canals, Venezia Taxi charges a €25 supplement, paid directly to the driver. Ask in advance whether it applies to your address.

Payment, licences and complaints

Licensed water taxis carry a yellow stripe with the licence number and a TAXI flag at the bow. The Comune has issued 250 licences in all, 25 of them for boats with a wheelchair lift. Hire boats with driver (NCC) have green stripes, Gran Turismo boats red ones.

If there’s a dispute, photograph the fare board posted at the taxi rank and note the licence number. Complaints go to the Comune di Venezia: the DIME online service desk (Reports section) or the number 041 041. To call a taxi, the Comune lists the number 199 48 49 50, but you’re better off phoning a consortium directly. Who the operators are and how they work is covered in our profiles of Consorzio Motoscafi Venezia, Venezia Taxi and Bucintoro Viaggi.

Book online

The prices below update from the platforms’ own data. The third product is Alilaguna, not a taxi: we include it because for solo travellers it’s often the most sensible choice.

If there are four or more of you, compare the private option too: free cancellation up to 24 hours before applies there as well. For how vouchers and cancellations work on the different platforms, see our guide on how to book a water taxi.

Who should pick what

Flying home from the same airport? The return route, with the sums on how early to leave, is on our from the centre to the airport page.