GetYourGuide and Venice water taxis

What exactly you buy on GetYourGuide

GetYourGuide doesn’t own boats or drive taxis. It’s an online marketplace based in Berlin (the company is GetYourGuide Deutschland GmbH) that sells other companies’ tours, tickets and transfers. Its general terms say so clearly: the platform acts as a commercial agent, and your transport contract is with the local supplier.

For you, this has two practical consequences. First: if something goes wrong on the boat, the supplier is responsible for the service. Second: payment, vouchers, cancellations and refunds always go through GetYourGuide. Suppliers can’t accept cancellations directly, and a cancellation agreed verbally with the operator, outside the platform, gives no right to a refund.

In the Venice airport transfers category the platform listed 49 products. Only some are real water taxis; the rest are cars, buses or the scheduled waterbus.

Who actually drives the boat: the Bucintoro–Alilaguna chain

The best-selling products in the category (the shared taxi from the airport, the shared taxi to the airport and the private taxi) all have the same supplier: Bucintoro Viaggi, a Venetian inbound travel agency. On its own GetYourGuide profile, Bucintoro states that it is controlled by Alilaguna, the company running the scheduled airport–centre service.

Bucintoro also says it has no taxi fleet of its own: the boats come from a partner in the group, Venezia Turismo, a motorboat consortium based at Tronchetto. The same group also runs the resale site Venice Link.

In plain terms: when on GetYourGuide you choose between the €18 Alilaguna waterbus and the €39 shared water taxi, you’re choosing between two products from the same group. That’s neither illegal nor improper, but the product page doesn’t explain it. You’ll find the details in our reviews of Bucintoro Viaggi, Venice Link and Alilaguna.

The “Boat Transfer with 3 Routes” product (€18) is an Alilaguna ticket, meaning a scheduled waterbus with stops, not a water taxi. The name doesn’t say so; the page address does.

Same route, different prices: the comparison

We lined up the prices on GetYourGuide and Tiqets (from our data, at the time of checking), the fares of the consortia that sell direct, and the City of Venice fare.

Two takeaways. On per-person products, namely shared taxi, Alilaguna and bus, GetYourGuide costs the same as other channels: booking there doesn’t penalise you. On private taxis, though, the gap is large. The private airport taxi on GetYourGuide costs €75 more than Venezia Taxi direct. The private taxi from the station costs more than three times the Consorzio’s online price. According to the product listing, in return it carries up to 6 people with 6 suitcases and includes a meet-and-greet on the platform with a name sign; porterage at the station, however, isn’t included and costs extra, €10 per suitcase.

GetYourGuide’s own terms acknowledge that the platform price may be higher than what the same supplier charges on other channels. In exchange they offer a price-difference refund guarantee, but it only applies to an identical activity from the same supplier found cheaper elsewhere.

Beware of overly easy comparisons, too. The consortia’s direct prices cover 4 people and 4 bags as standard, with €10 for each extra passenger. The GetYourGuide private taxi is listed for groups of up to 6. For a larger group the gap narrows.

The maths spelled out. For two, the private taxi costs €107.50 each against €39 for the shared one. For four, it drops to €53.75. For six, it reaches about €36 each, and the private taxi beats the shared one. For the same number of people, though, the Consorzio Motoscafi direct would charge €160 plus €20 in passenger supplements, or €30 each, plus €5 for every suitcase beyond the fourth. Details by arrival area are on the from the airport page and the private water taxi page.

Cancellations, delays and invoices

The default rule is simple. Cancel more than 24 hours before the start and you get a full refund. Within 24 hours, or if you don’t show up, you get nothing. Each product can set different conditions, though, and the label on the listing (refundable, partially refundable, non-refundable) takes precedence. The Venice water-taxi transfers we checked all showed free cancellation up to 24 hours before.

Three details worth knowing before you pay:

• The refund can go back to your original payment method or come as a GetYourGuide voucher. Vouchers expire and are lost if you delete your account: choose a refund to your card.
• The EU 14-day right of withdrawal doesn’t apply to services with a fixed date, which includes transfers.
• GetYourGuide doesn’t issue a tax invoice, only a payment confirmation. Business travellers should bear this in mind.

Some products offer “book now, pay later”: nothing charged at booking, with payment taken 72 hours before the service. Useful if your flight isn’t confirmed yet.

On flight delays, the general terms say nothing specific, and neither do the listings for the two main transfers. According to the product listing, the private taxi asks you to email your flight and hotel at least 48 hours ahead; the shared taxi warns that at the airport you may wait up to 40 minutes for other passengers. If your flight is delayed, let the supplier know on the number shown on the voucher. If you land late in the evening, see also our page on the night water taxi.

How to read the 4.4 rating

On GetYourGuide, reviews are reserved for people who bought the experience and then actually took it. That’s a serious filter against fake reviews. Two rules, however, push the average rating up compared with other sites.

First: when the score is calculated, fresher reviews count for more than older ones. Second: a review can be removed if it’s mainly about the booking process or the platform’s customer service. So anyone who had a refund problem often leaves no trace in the product’s rating.

You can see the effect with Bucintoro, the same supplier. On GetYourGuide it has a 4.3 supplier average. On Tripadvisor, where anyone can post, it has 3.6. Neither figure is false: they measure different audiences. The full platform comparison is in our Viator review.

The order of results should also be read with care. GetYourGuide states that its ranking also takes revenue into account, commissions included. A supplier paying a higher commission can move up the page. For the “Certified by GetYourGuide” badge, which appears on several transfers, we found no published criteria.

Commissions, fines and customer service

According to GetYourGuide’s supplier guide, the commission ranges from 20% to 30% of the price, depending on the country. It’s already included in the price you see and the supplier pays it. The terms don’t provide for a service fee charged to the traveller; at checkout, still check that the total matches the listing price.

A news item concerning Italy. In case PS12603 over Colosseum tickets, GetYourGuide received a fine of about €5.6 million from the Italian Competition Authority (Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato). The allegation: using automated systems to bulk-buy tickets at base price and resell them in pricier packages. The appeal to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR del Lazio) didn’t change the outcome: the fine stood. Venice and taxis aren’t involved, but the case says something about how the platform behaves when places are scarce.

For customer service there’s a help centre, chat, email and in-app chat with the supplier. The terms promise a reply usually within 24 hours, at most within 48. The only phone number published on a GetYourGuide page is the one for withdrawal. If you have a problem at the pier, call the supplier’s number shown on your voucher.

When to choose GetYourGuide and when to book elsewhere

In summary, GetYourGuide makes sense when the price matches other channels and you want the safety net of free cancellation. For a private taxi, get a direct quote first from the Consorzio Motoscafi or Venezia Taxi. Bear in mind, though, that Venezia Taxi only takes online bookings from October to March. For our other partner, read the Tiqets review. The full map of who sells what is on the operators and platforms page.