Bucintoro Viaggi: our review

Bucintoro Viaggi is the Venetian agency behind the shared water taxi that almost everyone books online to get from Marco Polo airport into the centre. It is not a taxi consortium and it owns no boats: it organises, sells and staffs the desks in the terminals, while the driving is done by a partner’s motorboats. Our verdict: the shared transfer works, and it is the right compromise between the scheduled boat and a private one, but there are two things about this company a traveller should know before paying — the group’s corporate ties, which are disclosed nowhere, and the gap between the reputation it has on the platforms that sell its products and the reputation it has elsewhere.

A disclosure we owe you: we are partners of GetYourGuide and Tiqets and may earn a commission on bookings made through our links, at no extra cost to you. What follows also holds, and especially holds, against our own interests.

Who Bucintoro Viaggi is

A travel agency and incoming operator based at San Marco 4267/a, on Campo San Luca, VAT number 02586910271. It sells guided walks, gondola rides, excursions to Murano, Burano and Torcello, ticketing and conference services, along with shared and private water taxi transfers.

The dates need a correction, because a much older founding year circulates online than anything documented. The profile the company itself publishes as a supplier on GetYourGuide says the agency was founded in 1976 and that the incoming department — the division that sells the transfers — has been growing since 1980. Any reference to a founding in the 1940s has no source and should not be repeated.

Bucintoro does not have a water taxi fleet. It says so itself: the transfers, shared or private, are possible thanks to a partner within its group, Venezia Turismo — a third Venetian water taxi consortium, based at Isola Nova del Tronchetto and separate from the two we review elsewhere. The people who greet you at the desk and the people who take you into the city are different companies.

The agency lists operational offices at Marco Polo airport, the cruise terminal, Santa Lucia station, Piazzale Roma and the Tronchetto bus terminal, and it also appears on the airport’s published list of chauffeur-hire (NCC) operators. The airport desk is given by the platforms’ product pages as desk 71, in the arrivals hall, near the moving walkway that leads to the darsena, the boat dock. On the exact location, though, the instructions do not agree: one and the same product page puts the desk on the first floor to the right near the walkway, and a few lines further down tells you to turn left as you come out of baggage reclaim. Neither the agency’s site nor the airport’s confirms the desk number, and the former mentions no airport presence at all. Go by the meeting point written on your voucher, and allow a few minutes to find it.

The corporate group, and why it matters

This is the most significant point in the review, and it comes from the company’s own words. On its supplier profile, Bucintoro Viaggi describes itself as “owned by Alilaguna Lines” and names Alilaguna as its holding company. Alilaguna is the company that runs the scheduled boat between the airport and the city, the €18 one. Bucintoro also runs venicelink.com, the resale site that sells Alilaguna tickets, shared shuttles and private taxis, and it answers reviews there under its own name.

The upshot is that the same group sells you both the cheap option and the expensive one, through different shop windows, and none of the consumer-facing pages says so. It is not illegal and it takes nothing away from the quality of the service, but it changes how you should read the “scheduled boat versus shared taxi” comparisons you find on those sites: they are not comparisons between competitors.

What it offers and what it costs

The main product is the shared water taxi to and from the airport, sold per person. Inbound, the trip is given as 50–100 minutes, because there is more than one stop; outbound, boarding at Piazzale Roma, San Marco, Santa Maria Elisabetta and San Zaccaria, it is around 40 minutes. At the time of checking, the price on our feed was around €39 per person in both directions; the same service on the group’s resale site is listed at €39 discounted to €36.

How boarding works: you show up at the desk with your voucher, wait for the boat’s load to fill out, then walk to the dock. There is no published frequency, and be sceptical of anyone who promises you one: departures follow availability, and travellers report waits of 15–25 minutes. Drop-off is directly at hotels on the Grand Canal and at the Molino Stucky; for addresses on the inner canals, a meeting point a few minutes’ walk from the hotel is agreed instead. For the JW Marriott on the Isola delle Rose and for San Clemente, you are dropped at San Marco, where you take the hotel’s own shuttle. Cancellation is free up to 24 hours before, with a full refund.

Alongside the shared service, the agency also supplies the private airport transfer, sold per boat for up to 6 people. Here is the comparison no product page makes: at the time of checking, that private transfer online cost appreciably more than the €140–160 the Venetian consortia ask through their own direct channel for the same trip, a mark-up on the order of 50–60%. You are paying for the platform, the locked price, the support and the written cancellation policy: if you do not need those, the direct channel is cheaper. The route-by-route figures are in fares and prices.

Strengths

• A physical presence in the terminals: desks at the airport, the cruise terminal, the station, Piazzale Roma and Tronchetto. With a voucher and a counter to go to, arriving is easier than it sounds.
• The shared transfer is an honest compromise: faster than the scheduled boat, much cheaper than a private taxi, and it drops you near your hotel rather than at a scheduled stop.
• Volume and continuity: tens of thousands of reviews on the transfers and a long track record across the Venetian terminals.
• It replies to reviews, nearly all of them, negative ones included.

Weaknesses

• Undisclosed group ties on the consumer-facing pages, between the agency, the resale site and the scheduled boat company.
• No fleet of its own: the on-board experience depends on the partner consortium, and the agency has limited leverage over any individual boat.
• The private transfer price sits well above the consortia’s direct channel.
• Variable timings on the inbound shared trip: if you are the last drop-off, the 100 minutes quoted is not a theoretical worst case.
• Recurring criticism of the island tours, a different product from the transfers but sold by the same company.

What travellers say

There is one figure here worth more than any average: the same company has 4.3 out of 5 from more than 93,000 reviews on the platform that sells its products, and 3.6 out of 5 from around 3,300 reviews on a platform that does not, with twenty-eight times fewer reviews. Neither number is false. They are different samples: reviews on the selling platform can only be left by people who actually booked and are solicited after the trip, while those on the other site are unprompted and open to anyone. A serious review site says that, instead of averaging the two.

The distribution on the independent aggregator is wide: roughly 1,214 excellent ratings and 831 good ones, but also 281 poor and 423 terrible. The dominant negative theme is not about the transfers but about the island tours: commentary in three languages, and time spent on the boat compared with time on the islands. One reviewer sums it up by saying you are dropped off and left to your own devices. On the walking and gondola products, short and satisfied reviews are the norm. Management replies to almost every review, including complaints about advertised timings: a point in its favour on responsiveness, a point against on the fact that the same complaint keeps coming back.

When to choose it, and the alternatives

Bucintoro’s shared transfer makes sense if you are travelling as one or two people with normal luggage, if your hotel is on the Grand Canal or a few minutes from a jetty, and if you have some slack in your schedule: for around forty euros a head you arrive by water without paying for a whole boat. It makes less sense if there are four or more of you — at that point the cost of a private boat split between passengers gets close — and if you have a tight connection or are arriving in the middle of the night.

The alternatives, in price order. The Alilaguna scheduled boat costs €18 and is the cheapest way into the city by water, at the cost of 60–75 minutes to San Marco. The shared water taxi is the middle ground. For a boat to yourself, compare the direct price lists in our Consorzio Motoscafi and Venezia Taxi reviews. And if you are thinking of booking on the group’s resale site, read our Venice Link review first: a far weaker reputational profile. The comparison of the different options is in water taxi, Alilaguna or vaporetto, and the route itself in from the airport to Venice.

In short: Bucintoro Viaggi is a well-organised agency that does well the one thing you will meet it for, namely putting you on a shared water taxi with a voucher in your hand. Book it for the shared transfer, look at the consortia for a private one, and keep in mind who owns whom.