Shared water taxi: one seat on board, several stops

How a shared boat fills up

A shared water taxi is a taxi motorboat used like a shuttle. You don’t hire the boat: you buy a seat, and the boat leaves once it has a full load of passengers. Each group gets off at its own hotel, one after another.

When you arrive at the airport, it goes like this:

1. Show your voucher at the operator’s desk in arrivals; the voucher itself tells you exactly where to find it.
2. Wait for the group to form. There are no departures at fixed intervals: the GetYourGuide listing gives a maximum wait of 40 minutes at the airport, while the Tiqets listing and the operator’s website talk of 20–45 minutes from arriving at the desk.
3. Walk to the taxi pier: 7–10 minutes along a covered walkway from arrivals to the boat basin.
4. Board. The crossing itself takes 25–35 minutes, then the drop-offs begin.

If your hotel is the last on the round, the trip gets longer. That’s why the GetYourGuide listing says 50–100 minutes: the low figure is for whoever gets off first, the high one for whoever gets off last.

Where the boat drops you

Hotels facing the Grand Canal, and the Hilton Molino Stucky, can be served directly at their own landing. For hotels on the inner canals, the operator sets a drop-off point within walking distance. Guests at the JW Marriott on Isola delle Rose or on San Clemente island get off at San Marco, near the hotel shuttle.

In practice: if your hotel isn’t on the water, allow for the last stretch on foot with your suitcases, often with a bridge to cross.

The return to the airport: where you board

In the other direction, the starting point depends on the product. According to the GetYourGuide listing, boats leave at set times from central points: Piazzale Roma, Carlton, Sabbioni, Santi Apostoli, Rialto, Accademia, Trinità, San Marco, San Zaccaria and, on the Lido, Santa Maria Elisabetta; the boat doesn’t stop at hotels on the inner canals, only at those on the Grand Canal. The stated duration is about 40 minutes. The Tiqets product for the same route talks instead of pick-up from the most central hotels, or an agreed meeting point a short walk from your hotel.

For the return, departures are scheduled, not on demand: according to the operator, roughly every 90 minutes. You give your flight time when you book; the GetYourGuide listing says pick-up is set about 3 hours before your flight, with the exact time and place confirmed by 15:00 the day before. Then remember it’s a 7–10 minute walk from the pier to the terminal. The step-by-step calculation is in our guide from Venice to Marco Polo airport.

Luggage, capacity and cancellation: the small print to read

The shared taxi includes luggage, but within a limit. According to the GetYourGuide listing, on the way in one suitcase and one piece of hand luggage per passenger are included, on the way back one suitcase per person; extra items are charged. The Tiqets listing includes carriage of luggage and excludes any “extra suitcases”, without giving a number. If you have two each, ask before booking.

Capacity isn’t uniform either. The Tiqets listing gives a maximum group of 14 people for the trip into Venice and 8 for the trip to the airport, without saying whether the limit applies to the boat or to a single booking: if you’re a large group, ask before paying. Two warnings from the GetYourGuide listing: the shared transfer from the airport isn’t suitable for wheelchair users, and in fog or bad weather it may be replaced by a car to Piazzale Roma.

Cancellation rules change from product to product:

• GetYourGuide, single trips in either direction: free cancellation up to 24 hours before.
• Tiqets, one way to or from the airport: free cancellation up to 24 hours before.
• Tiqets, return trip together (€66): non-refundable. You save about €12 against two single tickets, but lose all flexibility.

If your flight might change, the non-refundable return package is the wrong choice.

Shared taxi, Alilaguna, vaporetto: three different things

People searching online for a “public water taxi”, a “vaporetto from the airport” or a “waterbus” are usually after the same thing: the cheap way to get from the airport to Venice by water. But the words mix up three separate services.

The water taxi is a non-scheduled public service: it operates under a licence and fares set by the Comune, but with no fixed timetables or routes. You hire the whole boat. “Shared” is one way some agencies sell the seats on these boats one at a time.

Alilaguna is scheduled public transport: fixed stops, published timetables, a ticket per person. It’s run by a private company, the only one operating a scheduled water service in Venice. The boats are low, enclosed motor launches, not vaporetti. This is the “airport boat” that many people mistakenly call the vaporetto.

The vaporetto is the city’s ACTV network. It doesn’t serve the airport: ACTV tickets and tourist travel passes expressly exclude services to and from Marco Polo and all Alilaguna lines. ACTV’s link with the airport is a bus, the Aerobus, which runs to Piazzale Roma. From there you take the vaporetto on a separate ticket.

Then there’s one last trap. On GetYourGuide, the product “Boat Transfer to/from Marco Polo Airport w/ 3 Routes”, at €18, isn’t a taxi: it’s an Alilaguna ticket, sold at the same price as at the ticket office. That’s perfectly fine, as long as you know what you’re buying.

Alilaguna lines from the airport, in brief

Alilaguna links the airport with the centre on three lines:

• Blue, all year, with stops including Murano, Fondamente Nove, Lido, Arsenale, San Zaccaria, San Marco, Zattere, Giudecca, Tronchetto and Ferrovia. It stops a lot: on the official summer timetable it takes about 75–85 minutes to San Marco.
• Orange, all year: it enters via the Cannaregio canal and runs down the Grand Canal, calling first at Guglie and San Stae, then Rialto and Sant’Angelo, and finally Ca’ Rezzonico and Santa Maria del Giglio. On the official summer timetable it takes about 55–65 minutes to Rialto.
• Red, seasonal, from April to November according to Alilaguna, with stops including Murano, Fondamente Nove, Lido, San Zaccaria and San Marco.

A single costs €18, a return €32. The price includes one suitcase whose three dimensions add up to no more than 160 cm, plus one piece of hand luggage; each additional item costs €4. During the summer-timetable months, the Blue Line runs from the airport between 5:20 and 00:20, the Orange Line between 8:35 and 23:05; in winter the times change. Always check the current timetable on the Alilaguna website.

The detailed comparison, stop by stop and with the cases where a taxi beats the waterbus, is on our water taxi or Alilaguna page.

Who’s behind it: the same group sells the waterbus and the taxi

It helps to know who’s selling you the seat. The supplier of the shared airport water taxis on both GetYourGuide and Tiqets is Bucintoro Viaggi, a Venetian agency that says it belongs to Alilaguna. The boats are provided by a partner within the group, Venezia Turismo. The Venicelink website, which sells both Alilaguna tickets and shared taxis, belongs to the same group too.

In other words: the same corporate family sells you the €18 option and the €39 one. That isn’t illegal and doesn’t make the service worse. But none of the sales pages says so, and we’d rather you knew.

Read the ratings with this in mind too. The same shared service has 4.4★ on GetYourGuide and 4.3★ on Tiqets, which only collect reviews from people who booked, while the agency’s Tripadvisor page stands at 3.6★. More in our profiles of Bucintoro Viaggi, Alilaguna and Venice Link.

When the shared taxi stops being worth it

The shared taxi is designed for solo travellers and couples. As the group grows, the sums change. At €39 per person, six travellers spend €234: more than the €215 GetYourGuide charges for a private taxi for up to six, and far more than booking direct with a consortium.

Even with four, the gap narrows, especially if you book the private boat direct. The per-head sums, table by table, are on our private water taxi page.

Station and cruise port: shared transfers with weak reviews

The shared format also exists away from the airport, but there the ratings drop:

• From Santa Lucia station: the GetYourGuide shared transfer has 3.3★ from over 600 reviews; the Tiqets ones, in both directions, 3.3★ and 3.2★ from fewer than 20 reviews each. From the station, what’s more, the vaporetto leaves a few steps away. The alternatives are on our Santa Lucia station page.
• From the cruise port: the shared port–hotel shuttle has 2.1★. Read our cruise port page before booking it.

Shared routes and their competitors

Booking a seat online

The shared airport transfer on GetYourGuide is the platform’s most-reviewed water taxi in Venice: 4.4★ from over 28,000 ratings. The Tiqets version costs the same and is run by the same supplier. The “3 Routes” product is the Alilaguna ticket, not a taxi. For the differences between the airport desk and booking online, see how to book a water taxi; for every option from the airport, our guide from Marco Polo airport to Venice.