This Popular Tourist Attraction In Venice, Italy May Not Be Worth The Price

Venice is a popular tourist destination. There's no doubt about that. There were around 75,000 visitors to the city each day in 2024, while only around 50,000 people live in the city center. With the large number of tourists visiting Venice each and every day, can travelers even have a unique and local experience anymore? As popular as it may be, Venice is a historic Italian city that even travel guru Rick Steves calls "forever-unique," and with so many tourist attractions in such a tight area, tourists may want to skip over one popular tourist activity, since it might not be worth the price.

Venice is full of small canals that snake through the rows of buildings, offering tourists a unique view of the city. The calm waters, the magical Italian music flowing from surrounding cafés, and the scent of pizza filling the air. Sigh. It's easy to see why a gondola ride in Venice should be on your bucket list, although it's not cheap (one 30-minute ride costs around $100 or more, with evening rides being more expensive). But saving your precious euros for that gondola ride instead of spending them on a vaporetto (water bus) might be your best bet, as the former will be far more romantic. 

While visiting in the off-season is one of many essential travel hacks for visiting Italy, knowing how to save some money during your trip is also crucial. As tempting as it may be to hop on a vaporetto, your budget may benefit from using your own feet to get you from point A to point B.

Vaporetti are as significant to Venice as pasta is to the nation as a whole. They're not only a signature way of Venetian life, they are a crucial mode of public transportation — Venice, after all, is a city where you can't drive a car or just jump in a local taxi. The vaporetti act as water buses to whisk locals and tourists around Venice's waterways easily and efficiently, though not cheaply.

A look into the updated 2025 costs for passes shows various prices depending on the period of service. If you plan on using the vaporetto as a tourist novelty to experience Venice's boating culture, then a 75-minute, single-use ticket will run you $11.00 (€9.50). Tourists staying more than one day can purchase a 24-hour pass for $29.00 (€25), a 48-hour pass for $40.00 (€35), or a 72-hour pass for $52.00 (€45).

If you're planning on using the vaporetto as your main way to get around the city, then it might seem worth it. But at those costs, you would need to use the service quite a bit to get your money's worth. Venice isn't particularly large, so it may be more cost effective (and healthier) to get in those steps and just make your way around the city on foot. 

The bottom line is that the vaporetto is more expensive than using your own feet to get around Venice. Julia Buckley, who has called Venice home since 2020, writes in Lonely Planet that "Often, it's quicker and cheaper to walk, since the vaporetti are so expensive." She goes on to say that it's possible to walk from the main train station in Venice to some of the city's most iconic sites in 10 or 15 minutes. This ends up being less time than it would take on the vaporetto. 

In the r/Venezia subreddit thread, u/Wild-Accountant-8964 asks fellow Redditors if the Vaporetto pass was worth it, and u/txensen says that the pass "gives you great freedom to move around the city whenever you like. Walking is great but routes can be confusing." On the same thread, Venetian hotel worker u/TravelVM suggests that most days, you should "just walk around and get lost, that's the best way to visit Venice." But this user points out that if you purchase a day pass for the vaporetto on your last day, you can use it to visit offshore sites like Burano (an island known for its lace and colorful houses) and then to get to the train station when you're ready for departure. 

If you only plan on using the 75-minute Vaporetto pass, whatever you do, don't let that ticket expire. Redditor u/PrimeFrancium mentioned in the r/ItalyTravel subreddit thread that they found out the hard way that their tickets were expired by only a few minutes: "One stop before we were supposed to get down listening to our audio tour learning all about the city, the ticket checker came and asked for our tickets. He checked our tickets and said the ticket has expired 5-6 mins ago." Their penalty for having an expired ticket was 59 euros (more than $65) per person. Ouch!