Venice water taxi operators: who drives the boat, who sells it to you

Four kinds of player behind a water taxi

When you book a water taxi in Venice, you rarely deal with the person driving. Between you and the motorboat there are usually two or three links in the chain. It’s worth knowing which.

1. Licence holders and consortia. Water-taxi licences are issued by the Comune di Venezia, in a fixed number: 250 licences. Of these, 193 are “dual-use” (taxi plus hire with driver on the same boat), 7 are reserved for the gondoliers’ cooperatives and 50 are taxi-only, 25 of them for boats with a wheelchair lift. Individual licence holders often group together in consortia, which run the switchboard, online booking and airport desks. The two most visible brands are Consorzio Motoscafi Venezia and Venezia Taxi.

2. Agencies and resellers. Companies without their own taxi fleet that sell transfers, often by the seat. They organise the service and buy the trips from a consortium.

3. Public transport companies. Alilaguna (scheduled boats between the airport and the city), ACTV (vaporetti and city buses) and ATVO (airport buses). They don’t sell taxis, but they’re the alternatives every taxi should be compared against.

4. Booking platforms. GetYourGuide, Tiqets and Viator don’t drive boats. They act as intermediaries: the contract of carriage is between you and the local supplier.

Every profile, with a one-line verdict

We’ve written a profile for each of the players a traveller actually comes across. Each one covers who they are, what they sell, at what price and what travellers say about them, always with the source.

Beyond these, the airport also lists Venice Water Taxi (venicewatertaxi.it, which states it has 30 motorboats) and the Serenissima Taxi cooperative among private motorboat operators. They don’t have a full profile yet.

The same trip, five different prices

The clearest case is the private transfer from the airport to the historic centre. For the same route, at the time of checking:

The figures aren’t fully comparable. The prepaid online service is door to door with an assigned boat, while the city fare applies rank to rank. The consortia also add their own surcharges: the Consorzio Motoscafi charges €10 for each person from the fifth up, so for 6 you reach €180. Even so, booking direct costs less than GetYourGuide and the same as Tiqets.

So why go through a platform? For the terms. On GetYourGuide the general rule is free cancellation up to 24 hours before, and on some products payment can be deferred. The Consorzio Motoscafi publishes no cancellation policy on its website, and Venezia Taxi only offers a right of withdrawal within 14 working days of booking. If your flight might be delayed or your plans are uncertain, flexibility has a value. GetYourGuide’s terms also state explicitly that the price on the platform may be higher than what the same supplier charges elsewhere.

To compare terms product by product, read the page on how to book a water taxi.

One group behind three brands

There’s a link that no sales page mentions. Bucintoro Viaggi, in its supplier profile on GetYourGuide, says it is owned by Alilaguna. Bucintoro runs the Venice Link website, and Venice Link’s terms of use describe it as an Alilaguna brand. Bucintoro also states that the boats for its transfers come from a group partner, Venezia Turismo, a motorboat consortium based at Tronchetto.

In practice, the same group sells both the cheap scheduled boat (Alilaguna, €18) and the pricier taxi transfer. That isn’t illegal and doesn’t mean the service is poor. It just means that when you compare Alilaguna, Venice Link and the shared transfer on a platform, you’re often comparing products from the same group.

Watch out for a common mix-up too: Venezia Turismo is a different company from Consorzio Motoscafi Venezia. The Consorzio Motoscafi has its desk at the airport, in the arrivals hall, not at Tronchetto.

Why the same service gets different scores

The shared airport transfer supplied by Bucintoro appears on several sites with very different ratings:

None of these numbers is false. They measure different populations. The wider the pool, from “customers invited after the trip” to “anyone”, the lower the score. Both GetYourGuide and Tiqets can remove reviews that are mainly about the booking process or customer service, which explains part of the gap. Our advice: look at the number of reviews before the score, and read the most recent negative ones. A product with 2 reviews is simply new and not yet proven.

How to spot a licensed water taxi

An authorised motorboat can be recognised even from the shore. Under the city regulations:

• taxis have yellow reflective bands with the licence number and a bow flag reading TAXI in black on yellow;
• hire-with-driver boats have green bands on the side windows, with the authorisation number and the city crest, and a green bow flag;
• the larger Gran Turismo boats have red bands.

Hire-with-driver boats are booked in advance and moor at piers separate from the taxis’. If at a pier you’re offered an unbooked ride on a boat without yellow bands and a TAXI flag, head for the nearest taxi rank instead.

The city taxi ranks are official piers: among others Tronchetto, Piazzale Roma, Ferrovia, Rialto, San Marco, San Marcuola and Lido Santa Maria Elisabetta. Each displays the fare board. Photograph it before you board: it’s the most useful evidence in a dispute. The fares in detail are on our water-taxi prices page.

Names and domains to treat with caution

Search for “water taxi Venice” and you’ll come across sites that look like local operators but aren’t.

• bookwatertaxivenice.com is an intermediary run by a company registered in Barcelona. It doesn’t publish an Italian phone number, its terms are governed by Spanish law, and the free cancellation announced on its home page doesn’t match the one in its contractual terms.
• watertaxivenice.com is a domain that showed no website at the time of checking. Don’t confuse it with venicewatertaxi.it, which is an active operator.

A practical rule: before paying, look on the site for the registered company name, VAT number, an address in Venice and a phone number. If all of those are missing, choose a channel you know.

Where to make a complaint

For water taxis, the authority is the Comune di Venezia, Mobility and Transport Department (Direzione Mobilità e Trasporti). You can report an issue by calling 041 041 or, alternatively, through the “Segnalazioni” (reports) section of the DIME online help desk. If you want a written record, send the complaint by certified email (PEC) to mobilitatrasporti@pec.comune.venezia.it.

Keep three things: the boat’s licence number, a photo of the rank’s fare board and your receipt or voucher. If you booked through a platform, open a complaint there too: on GetYourGuide and Tiqets the contract is with the supplier, but the platform handles refunds and cancellations. On GetYourGuide, cancellations agreed directly with the operator outside the platform are not refundable.

The products we sell, and why

We earn a commission when you book through GetYourGuide or Tiqets. Viator isn’t our partner, and we say so in its profile. Commissions don’t change the facts: on this page you’ll also find the consortia’s direct prices, which are lower than the platforms’.

Below are the most-booked airport transfers. To choose between private and shared, start with the page on the water taxi from the airport or the comparison water taxi, Alilaguna or vaporetto.

Frequently asked questions