Marco Polo Airport to the Venice Cruise Port: Rent a Car or Ride?

Out of Arrivals, the airport sends you along a covered walkway to the P1 multi-storey car park. The desks are on its third level, the Terrace.

No shuttle bus to wait for — that’s the good news.

Nine brands are on the airport’s list — only Avis gave us hours on its own page: 8 AM to midnight daily, with a 24-hour drop-off and an Avis Preferred desk on the terminal’s level 1 from 9 to 5.

The rest of the desks, town ones included, are on the hub’s desk cards.

On those assumptions the car comes to about €27 (about US$30) — roughly €2 of it fuel. Two Aerobus and People Mover tickets are €23 (about US$25) at the “from” fares.

For two, the bus wins before the car leaves P1.

At four, the fixed taxi at €45 (about US$50) for the whole cab is the one to beat, and it pulls up at the terminal.

A rental can’t do that — it has to be parked or returned first.

The car only wins once it has somewhere to go after the port. That’s a different trip.

No line we read prints a per-person transfer price. MSC has a booth in the airport’s arrivals hall and sells transfers through its call centre or your agent; Fly&Cruise fares include them.

No rental brand we read takes cars back at the cruise terminal.

So an airport car driven to Marittima has three endings, and none of them is free.

Leave it with Hertz or Sixt at Piazzale Roma and ride the People Mover to the terminal. That makes it a one-way from the airport — Hertz’s Italian terms say one-way fees “may apply”, without an amount.

Leave it at Avis in Mestre, about 5.8 miles out by our routing, and you still need a cab or a bus to the ship.

Or keep it through the cruise — and a one-day rental becomes a week of daily rates plus a garage.

Price the one-way before you choose the car, not after — our one-way guide explains how brands set those fees.

Hertz’s Italian rental terms charge a “Location Service Charge” at “certain locations (e.g. airports and railway stations)” and pass on a “Vehicle Licence Fee”, without amounts.

A May 2018 Avis Budget Italia tariff put the airport surcharge at 16% and railway stations at 12%; that document is eight years old, so we don’t calculate with it.

Read that as a reason to look for a separate airport line on your quote — not as a rate to expect.

Italy’s standard VAT is 22%. We assume an EU rental quote shows it already, so our calculator adds none; if yours says “IVA esclusa”, add 22%.

The pages we read didn’t state a deposit, a collision-damage excess or the extra cost of an automatic for any Venice desk.

Ask for all three in writing before you pay. If you need an automatic, say so at the search, not at the counter.

Discover Cars’ Venice airport page, read Oct 3, 2026, said “just $12/day” with an average of about $23 a day (a search title had shown “from $9”), with a bare $ sign.

That’s a headline, not your rate — and with no currency named, assume dollars and check the booking screen.

Our dollar conversions use the ECB reference rate for Oct 2, 2026, about $1.12 to the euro. Your card company will apply its own.

Treviso’s Canova airport is about 18.7 miles (30.2 km) from Marittima by our routing — about 43 minutes on empty roads.

From Treviso airport, ATVO’s 351 takes about 30 minutes to Mestre and 40 to Venice, from €14, timed to flights. That fare is about US$16.

Holland America, which sails its “Trieste (Venice)” cruises from Trieste, says it runs no transfers from Treviso. HAL guests landing there arrange their own way.

We didn’t read Treviso’s rental desks. Search that airport on its own if it’s yours.

Decide where the car ends before you search. Then compare only the results that let you leave it there.

Discover Cars’ Marco Polo page lists the desks in P1; our review of it covers the deposit and its own coverage product.