Venice Link: our review of the website

An online shop, not an operator

Venicelink owns no boats and holds no taxi licences. It is a website reselling other companies’ services. Its own Tripadvisor listing says as much, presenting it as an online service run by Bucintoro Viaggi. At the bottom of every page, and again on the contacts page, you find Bucintoro Viaggi S.r.l., San Marco 4267/a, VAT no. 02586910271. Finally, the terms of use describe it as a brand of Alilaguna S.p.A.

So the chain runs like this: Bucintoro Viaggi, which says it belongs to Alilaguna, runs the website; the transfer boats come from the partner consortium Venezia Turismo. Anyone buying an Alilaguna ticket or a shared taxi on Venicelink stays within the same group throughout, even though the page does not explain it.

What it sells, and for how much

The catalogue goes beyond taxis. These are the starting prices shown on the home page:

The shared taxi’s “from €25” is not the airport price. On the product page the “Venice Shuttle IN/OUT”, i.e. the Marco Polo link, costs €39, discounted to €36, and the website warns that the price may change on some dates. The €25 is the floor for some other route. The same goes for the private taxi “from €59”: that is the lowest list price, not the ride from the airport, which costs €140–160 with the consortia.

Direct or via a platform: the difference is small

The group’s same shared airport taxi can be bought in several places. When we checked, prices were:

The difference is only a few euros, and the service appears to be the same: the Venicelink page and the Tiqets listing give the same desk 71 at the airport and the same possible wait of 20–45 minutes. The conditions, however, differ. On Venicelink the Venice Shuttle can only be booked for at least 2 people (solo travellers must pay for two), runs for arrivals from 8:00 to 22:30 and costs €6 more after 20:00; the page does not say how much luggage is included. A couple saves about €6: weigh that against the cancellation terms and the review history below.

The shared-taxi maths is the usual one. Two of you spend €72–78; four of you €144–156, i.e. as much as a private taxi booked directly with a consortium (€140–160 per boat). The full comparison is on the page about the shared water taxi.

The reviews: a profile split in two

On Tripadvisor Venicelink scores 3.0 out of 5 from 257 reviews. The spread is unusual: terrible (94) outnumbers excellent (92), with 36 very good, 15 average and 20 poor in between. So there are more one-star reviews than five-star ones. On Trustpilot the profile, unclaimed by the company, has just 3 reviews, all one star: too few for a score, useful only as accounts. Four themes keep coming back.

Prepaid rides that never arrive. On Tripadvisor one traveller describes prepaying €170 for a 2:00 a.m. airport pick-up, seeing nobody turn up and being stranded at the airport with two small children, eventually calling the police. Management replied that the refund had been issued. The same episode also appears on Trustpilot.

Slow refunds. A customer on Trustpilot reports that the cancellation had been agreed over two months earlier and that, despite numerous emails, the refund was still pending.

Rejected vouchers. Several Tripadvisor reviewers say they bought 24- or 48-hour ACTV passes and had both the QR code and the booking number rejected at ticket machines and by Venezia Unica staff, without being able to exchange the voucher.

Island tours with a lot of boat time. One reviewer reconstructed their day like this: about an hour and a half on the boat to get there, then a 55-minute stop in Murano, two hours on Burano, 50 minutes in Torcello, and finally about two hours to get back.

For balance: on Tripadvisor positive reviews of airport transfers are not rare, and describe a fast, professional and reliable service. Management answers criticism signing as Bucintoro Viaggi, the clearest public confirmation of who is behind the website.

Older threads on the Rick Steves forum

The Rick Steves forum, widely read by North American travellers, has been discussing Venicelink for years, and rarely favourably. The threads are a few years old, so the prices quoted are dated; the picture, though, matches recent reviews.

• In a thread about water-taxi prices, one user reports that when setting up a transfer from the airport to the centre the price jumped by €50 at checkout, to €109: exactly the price asked at the landing stage, so no advantage in booking ahead. The same thread gives €25 per person for a one-way shared ride.
• In another thread a user describes going down to the waterfront at the agreed time with no boat turning up, and says the company only got in touch once he had opened a payment dispute with his credit-card issuer. He recommends Consorzio Motoscafi instead.
• In the same thread other users explain that Viator resells Venicelink transfers with a mark-up: one traveller had found $180 return on Venicelink against $245 one way on Viator.
• The oldest thread already identified Venicelink as run by Alilaguna.

There is a positive account too, in a thread about the shared taxi to the airport: a user describes booking three taxis on Venicelink for their group, from a hotel on the Grand Canal to the airport, and being very satisfied, at €89 per boat for 8 people with luggage.

The forum’s overall verdict: book a consortium directly and treat Venicelink with caution on price and reliability.

If you decide to buy here

The shared airport taxi sold by Venicelink comes from the same group that supplies, on GetYourGuide, a shared taxi with tens of thousands of good reviews. The problem does not seem to be the boat but everything around it: confirmations, refunds, vouchers. A few precautions reduce the risk.

For night rides, the page about the water taxi at night collects the options for late arrivals.

Alternatives

For the shared taxi, the same supplier sells on GetYourGuide and Tiqets at about €39 per person, with free cancellation written on the product and the platform’s support if something goes wrong. For a private boat, Venezia Taxi and Consorzio Motoscafi cost €140–160 per boat booked directly. On a tight budget, the Alilaguna waterbus costs €18: comparison in taxi or Alilaguna. And if you want to understand first how to book a water taxi without surprises, read how to book.