Bucintoro Viaggi: our review

An agency, not a boat operator

Bucintoro Viaggi S.r.l. is a travel and incoming-services agency with its office in Campo San Luca, halfway between Rialto and San Marco (address: San Marco 4267/a). Its catalogue includes guided walking tours, boat trips, gondola rides, excursions to the islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello, tickets, events and weddings. On top of that come water-taxi transfers, both shared and private.

Online, the founding dates get muddled, so let us set them straight. According to its GetYourGuide supplier profile, the agency was founded in 1976, while the incoming department, the one that handles transfers, has been running since 1980. The “since 1980” you read on the website therefore refers to the department, not the company. Older dates circulating online are not backed by any source.

Marco Polo airport also lists “Bucintoro” among the chauffeured-hire (NCC) operators working at the airport.

The group: Alilaguna, Bucintoro, Venicelink

This is what the sales pages leave out. In its GetYourGuide profile, Bucintoro writes that it is owned by Alilaguna, the private company running the scheduled waterbus between the airport, the cruise terminal and the historic centre, and calls it its holding company. The legal form and size of the stake are not public, and Alilaguna’s website does not mention Bucintoro.

Bucintoro also runs the sales website Venicelink, whose terms of use describe it as a brand of Alilaguna S.p.A. At San Marco Giardinetti there is a shared ticket office signed “Alilaguna & Bucintoro Viaggi”.

Why does it matter? Because the same group sells travellers both the cheap option (the Alilaguna waterbus) and the expensive one (the water taxi), across several channels, without any page saying so. There is nothing unlawful about it, but anyone comparing offers has a right to know.

Who actually drives the boat

Bucintoro has no taxi fleet of its own. Its profile says so: shared and private transfers are made possible by its group partner Venezia Turismo, a motorboat consortium based at Tronchetto, distinct from both Consorzio Motoscafi Venezia and Venezia Taxi.

In practice: you book on a platform, the contracting supplier is Bucintoro, the boat belongs to Venezia Turismo. If something goes wrong, your first point of contact remains the platform you paid on.

Bucintoro lists service desks at the airport, the cruise terminal, Santa Lucia station, Piazzale Roma and Tronchetto. At the airport the meeting point is desk 71 in the arrivals hall, on the left as you leave baggage reclaim: both the Tiqets listing for the shared taxi and the FAQ of Venezia Turismo, the consortium providing the boats, say so. The same Tiqets listing warns that, once at the desk, you may wait 20–45 minutes before departure. The exact meeting point is in any case shown on your voucher.

What it sells on the platforms

Bucintoro is the named supplier for the best-selling water taxis on GetYourGuide and for the matching products on Tiqets. The table shows prices and ratings as read when we checked.

Two notes. The Alilaguna product is not a taxi: it is a ticket for the scheduled waterbus, and on Tiqets the voucher must be exchanged at a Bucintoro office before boarding. On GetYourGuide the €18 product “with 3 routes” is the same kind of Alilaguna ticket. And the shared taxi from the station has the lowest rating in the range: 3.3 from over 650 reviews.

The shared taxi: how it really works

The shared taxi from the airport carries several groups of passengers on one boat and drops them off one after another. That is why the stated journey time runs from 50 to 100 minutes: if you are the last off, the trip gets longer. The product page explains that hotels on the Grand Canal (and the Hilton Molino Stucky) are served directly; for hotels on the inner canals you are dropped at an agreed point within walking distance.

Outbound to the airport, according to the GetYourGuide listing, boats pick up at Piazzale Roma, then at San Marco and San Zaccaria, and finally at the Lido (Santa Maria Elisabetta); the exact departure point is the one shown on your voucher. If you book on GetYourGuide you can cancel free of charge up to 24 hours before departure. Times, waits and luggage are covered on our page about the shared water taxi.

The €215 private taxi: how much extra you pay

Here the comparison is stark. For the same trip from the airport to the centre, these were the prices read on the same day:

The Bucintoro product on GetYourGuide costs about 35–55% more than the two consortia booked directly; the same supplier, on Tiqets, sells a private taxi with the same 6-person limit for €180. In return you get up to 6 people for a single price, written free cancellation and the option to book instantly in any season, which Venezia Taxi does not allow online from April to September.

The break-even point against the shared taxi is 6 people: €215 divided by six is about €36 each, less than the €39 of the shared taxi.

4.3 on one platform, 3.6 on the other

On GetYourGuide, Bucintoro’s supplier profile has more than 93,000 reviews, averaging 4.3 out of 5. On Tripadvisor the same company scores 3.6 out of 5 from 3,303 reviews, with a very wide spread: 1,214 excellent, 831 very good, 553 average, 281 poor and 423 terrible.

Neither number is false. They measure different populations. On GetYourGuide only people who booked and completed the service review it, by invitation, and reviews about the platform itself can be removed. On Tripadvisor anyone can write, uninvited. The wider the pool, the lower the score. That is why we do not average them: we report both numbers with their origin.

Recurring criticism, and the replies

On Tripadvisor the most frequent complaint is not about transfers but about the island tours: reviewers object to a guide switching between three languages and say more time is spent on the boat than ashore on the islands. One reviewer says they were left to their own devices once they landed. Reviews of gondola rides and walking tours, by contrast, are short and satisfied, and praise the guides.

A point in its favour: management replies to almost every review, signing as Bucintoro Viaggi, including detailed answers about timings and free time. A point against: the same complaints keep coming back.

We found no lawsuits or penalties against the company. The open issue remains transparency about the group it belongs to.

Alternatives

If there are four or more of you, booking Consorzio Motoscafi or Venezia Taxi directly costs less than the Bucintoro private taxi. If there are one or two of you, the shared taxi remains the sensible choice, or the Alilaguna waterbus at €18: full comparison in taxi or Alilaguna. For prices on every route, see how much a water taxi costs.