Is the Venice Pass Worth It?

Almost all major cities have major sightseeing passes (Paris Pass, New York Pass, London Pass, etc.). Venice is no different. For those going to Venice (see our post on a 3-day trip to Venice and the 10-Day North Italy Itinerary), you will definitely wonder if this is a way to save money on the sights that you want to see. These passes typically include a very long list of attractions. Organizers advertise them as saving travelers a lot of money. However, the reality is that they don’t generally save you nearly what they advertise. The question still remains – does it actually save you money? We will attempt to answer the question “Is the Venice Pass Worth It?” below.

Overview of the Venice Pass

First, there are at least three different organizations selling tickets that would be considered a Venice Pass. Overall, all three sellers advertise their products as pre-purchased tickets that bundle and save the visitor money. Most of them also advertise skip-the-line access since you already have a ticket for many attractions. Each offering has a sizeable number of attractions/locations available.

Venezia City Pass

The most comprehensive Venice Pass is the Venezia City Pass. The Venezia City Pass comes in three tiers (Starter, Classic, and Complete) that offer entrance from 10 up to 34 unique locations. The Starter Pass includes popular attractions like Doge’s Palace, a Grand Canal tour, Leonardo Da Vinci Museum, and Scala Contarini. An upgrade to the Classic Pass includes attractions like a gondola ride, an island tour of Murano, Burano, & Torcello, a tour of Teatro La Fenice, and many churches (not including St. Mark’s). The largest pass, the Complete Venezia City Pass, adds some additional art, glass-making, and lace-making museums.

The Venice Pass

The next Venice Pass is named just that – The Venice Pass. In keeping with the basic name, this pass also has the most basic list of inclusions. The pass includes an entrance to the Basilica of San Pietro di Castello, the Church of Sant’Alvise, the Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoil, Leonardo’s Machines Museum, and the Glass Cathedral of Santa Chiara Murano. If you have read our 3-day Venice trip suggested itinerary, you will see that none of these attractions appear on our list. The pass does include a 1-day unlimited Venice public transportation pass. However, the city of Venice sells this same transport pass for about €20. Therefore, the €99 cost isn’t a great deal any way you look at it. We won’t consider this pass in the remainder of this post.

Venezia Unica

The final Venice Pass is the Venezia Unica City Pass. The city of Venice (and not a private company) sells this pass. There are two parts of this pass that we need to analyze. The first component is a traditional city pass that bundles several tickets together for an advertised discount price. Like the Venice Pass above, this pass offers a very limited selection of attractions. The only ones of note are the Doge’s Palace, some St. Mark’s Square museums, and a Teatro La Fenice tour. If these are the only attractions you’ll use from the pass, the pass’s €47.90 (without Teatro La Fenice) or €57.90 (with Teatro La Fenice) price tags aren’t worth it.

The second (and more unique) part of the pass is a bundling of city services. The city services that can be purchased include airport transfers, public transit within Venice, parking, public toilet entrance, and public Wi-Fi service. Venezia Unica doesn’t offer any of these services at a discount over purchasing them at the point of sale. However, you can purchase them online ahead of time and save yourself the need to stand in a ticket line in several places. Venezia Unica offers the city services part of this pass alone without the attractions bundle described above. This part of the card is worth a consideration if you are fairly certain of your plans and want to streamline the transportation and services part of your trip.

Using the Venice Pass

Given that the Venezia City Pass is the only pass that may still have some value to visitors, that is the only one reviewed below. Using this pass is fairly simple. After purchase, it is sent to you via email. This pass should be printed out upon receipt. While some attractions will take a digital version from a phone or tablet, some places will want to see the hard copy.

To get a ticket to an attraction, you simply show up at the first attraction that you want to use it at. The attraction will scan the pass to ensure it is valid and provide a ticket to the attraction for no additional charge. Once the pass has been scanned at the first attraction, the validity period starts. The pass is only good for 7 days from the time of first scan. This should be plenty of time as most people don’t stay in Venice that long.

Finally, the Venezia City Pass does include the fare for some attractions that require reservations. The pass does not excuse the visitor from the requirement of making a reservation. Therefore, visitors will need to make a free reservation with the attraction by selecting the Free Venezia City Pass option when making the reservation. This can be confusing for some who believe that the city pass takes care of everything. Do some research on the places you want to visit to ensure this won’t be an issue for you.

Analysis – 3-Day Venice Scenario

Finally, we will look at a scenario as if we were getting the Venezia City Pass. It should be obvious that if you are going to all places the ticket grants access to the pass is a good deal. However, I would guess that almost 100% of people who buy the pass are not able to go to all the attractions on the pass. Therefore, as a real-life test, we will compare the Venezia City Pass against our 3-Day Venice Itinerary.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of overlap between our list of best attractions and what the Venezia City Pass covers. The Venezia City Pass includes the Doge’s Palace, a Grand Canal tour, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and a tour of the Teatro La Fenice (if purchasing the Classic Pass). In our specific scenario, the Starter Venezia City Pass provides €48.50 in ticket benefits costs but costs €74.90/pass upfront. Therefore, purchasing the Starter Pass is a bad deal. It costs the traveler €26.40 per person more than if the tickets were purchased directly from each site. Similarly, the Classic Venezia City Pass provides €59.50 in ticket benefits but costs €99.90. That’s an extra €40.40 per person paid in unnecessary ticket costs. No matter how you look at it, the Venezia City Pass is not a good purchase if you are doing our 3-Day Venice Itinerary.

Activity	Adult Cost	Child Cost	Venezia Pass Required
Doge’s Palace	€25.00	€13.00	Standard
Grand Canal Tour*	€7.50	€7.50	Standard
Peggy Guggenheim Collection	€16.00	€9.00	Standard
Teatro La Fenice Opera	€11.00	€7.00	Classic
	€48.50 €59.50	€29.50 €36.50	Standard Ticket Benefits Classic Ticket Benefits

*The Grand Canal Tour in the 3-Day Venice itinerary is actually a ride on the main Venice city ferry at sunset. This is included in a 48-hour ferry pass which will still be required for other tasks so €7.50 isn’t actually being saved. However, the Grand Canal Tour offered by the Venezia City Pass is more of a guided tour. Therefore, you may get a little more value out of it.

Why Isn’t Venezia City Pass a Good Deal?

There are two major reasons this isn’t a good buy. First, the attractions covered aren’t all the major ones. Notably absent from the covered items are St. Mark’s Basilica, San Giorgio Maggiore, Gallerie dell’Accademia, and the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. Second, the pass is valid for 7 days, and no shorter time frames can be purchased. A three-day itinerary does not take advantage of this fact. If you were going to be in Venice for a full week (or close to it), I imagine that the math would change. Several of the lesser-known and visited attractions that are included would be on itineraries for those who are in Venice for a whole week.