Shared water taxi from Marco Polo Airport: how it works

What the shared boat costs

The shared water taxi sits between the two obvious ways in from Marco Polo Airport. It is a motoscafo like a private taxi, with the same hull and the same landings, but you share the cabin and the cost with other passengers and you wait at the dock until the boat is full. The fare is charged per person for a single trip, the same in both directions.

The arithmetic is what decides most bookings. The shared boat is priced per person, the private one per boat for up to four, so the gap closes as your group grows: at four people a launch of your own costs about the same, without the wait and without the intermediate stops, and from the fifth passenger it adds a supplement a head. Below four, the shared boat is the cheapest way onto a motoscafo.

How long it takes

Count two parts. The first is the wait at the dock while the boat fills, put at 20 to 45 minutes. The second is the crossing: about 50 minutes to a central landing, and up to 100 minutes when your stop comes late in the sequence. A private taxi covers the same water in 20 to 30 minutes under the city tariff, and the ATVO express bus reaches Piazzale Roma in 20 minutes.

Published descriptions of the service put the boat at six to eight passengers. There is no departure timetable to book against, so anything you have to catch on land is worth planning generously.

Where you board and where it leaves you

Your voucher is exchanged at desk 71 in the arrivals hall, not scanned at the pier. From there the moving walkway leads to the water dock, following the blue "Water transport" signs. The signage at the airport claims four minutes on foot; published accounts of the walk range from 4 to 13 minutes, so allow more than the sign says if you are pulling a case.

The boat calls at a set list of landings rather than at any address you name:

• Rialto, Sant'Angelo and SS. Apostoli on the Grand Canal
• Piazzale Roma, Guglie and Fondamente Nove
• Fondamenta Sabbioni
• Hotels with their own landing on the Grand Canal, which the boat reaches directly
• Guests of the JW Marriott and San Clemente, who are set down at San Marco

For anything less accessible the crew names a meeting point within walking distance of your address. That is the honest limit of the service: a shared boat to a landing, not a transfer to your door.

Luggage

One suitcase and one piece of hand luggage per person travel with you, and the operator asks passengers not to exceed two bags each. The Alilaguna boat includes one bag up to 160 cm in combined dimensions plus hand luggage and charges €4 for every further piece; the ATVO airport bus carries luggage free of charge and sets no limit on it.

Booking, cancellation and service hours

The ticket is bound to the date you choose and can be cancelled free of charge up to 24 hours before the trip. That is the opposite of the timed ACTV ticket for your days in the city, which is neither refundable nor changeable once it is bought.

The service is published as a daytime service, from 08:00 to 21:30. A secondary account of the service puts the minimum at two passengers per departure. Book the date, keep the voucher on your phone, and present it at desk 71 after you clear the baggage hall.

The way back to the airport

The return is a booking of its own, with pickup points including Piazzale Roma, the Carlton, Sabbioni and SS. Apostoli. The exact pickup time is confirmed by 15:00 on the day before and is set at roughly three hours before your flight; the run back takes about 40 minutes. Three hours sounds generous, but with a shared boat, a walk to the pickup point and the queue at the terminal it is not.

Who should take it

• Two travellers with luggage and a hotel on the water: two seats cost well under a whole boat, and both end at the same landing.
• A solo traveller who wants the boat rather than the bus without paying for the whole hull.
• Not a group of four or five: a private launch costs the same and leaves when you do.
• Not the budget arrival: the ATVO bus costs €10 and takes 20 minutes to Piazzale Roma.
• Not a late landing: the daytime service ends at 21:30.

For an arrival after the shared boats have stopped, the private tariff takes over. The official fixed fare from the airport to the historic centre is €110 plus surcharges, the operators' consortium quotes €160 for up to four people, and both add a night surcharge: €10 between 22:00 and 06:00 under the city tariff, €15 between 22:00 and 07:00 at the consortium. The last Alilaguna Blu sailing leaves the airport at 00:20. The full picture is on water taxi in Venice.

Once you step off at the landing the transfer is done and the city network takes over. No timed vaporetto ticket covers a journey to or from Marco Polo Airport in either direction, so the ticket for your days in Venice is bought on its own.

The fares and procedures on this page follow the water taxi tariff set by the Comune di Venezia and the official fares of the other operators serving the airport, Alilaguna and ATVO, together with the ACTV tariff published by AVM.