Renting a Car After a Venice Cruise: Pickups, Drop-offs and the Airport Run

MSC’s Venice page covers boarding — check-in at Marittima, then a ferry to Marghera — and says nothing about the morning you come back.

Read your disembarkation notice for the place, not just the time.

Back at Marittima, the town desks at Piazzale Roma are a single People Mover stop away.

Coming off at Fusina, which Regent, Seabourn and one Viking itinerary use, Avis at Mestre station is the nearest desk on our list — about 6.6 miles (10.6 km), roughly 17 minutes by our routing.

Back at Trieste, Ravenna or Chioggia, every desk on this page is a drive — the outlying-ports page has the distances.

We found no line guidance on the earliest safe flight home from any of these ports, so we won’t invent one.

Leave more slack than you would at home.

Avis at Mestre station prints a flat €25 for a return outside its hours — about US$30.

Weigh that against a taxi out to the airport desk, not against nothing.

Hertz at Piazzale Roma wants it arranged first. You park in the Hertz area, leave the papers on the seat and drop the keys in its secure box.

Set that up when you book — Hertz’s page doesn’t say how late you can ask.

Sixt’s returns go through the blue-line car park, with half an hour free on the return ticket, or up the branch ramp.

Avis at the airport needs no planning at all.

Flying the same day? Return there and walk back along the covered walkway to the terminal. The hub’s checker tests any day and time against every desk.

Collecting is the easier half — as long as the desk is open when you reach it.

Hertz at Piazzale Roma closes at 12:30 on summer weekends, and its winter timetable shows no Sunday opening from November.

A Sunday arrival and a Hertz booking is the pairing to avoid.

Sixt there runs to 4 PM at weekends; Avis at the airport, to midnight every day.

Don’t book the pickup for the ship’s arrival time, because the terminal and the People Mover come first. Check it against the weekend hours before you pay.

For three of you the car comes to about €27 (about US$30) before a one-way fee. Three bus-and-People-Mover tickets are €34.50 (about US$40) at the “from” fares, our arithmetic.

The car loses this one, and the one-way fee only widens the gap.

The airport lists its €45 (about US$50) fixed fare for journeys to and from Marco Polo, so it holds on the way back too — name the cruise terminal when you book the cab.

Rent after the cruise for the days in the hills, not for the ride to the plane.

Off a week at sea with full suitcases and a car to collect, the bags go wherever you go.

Bounce, a luggage-storage marketplace, lists spots at Piazzale Roma, Santa Lucia and Mestre from €1.95 (about US$2) a day on its Venice page, read Oct 4, 2026 — treat it as a lead, not a booking.

Otherwise they ride in the trunk, out of sight, which only works if you park where you’re happy to leave them.

Planning a night in Venice and the car tomorrow? Our Venice hotel guide shortlists places to sleep before the drive.

Holland America puts its Trieste terminal about two hours from Marco Polo, and we’d expect about the same coming back.

Heading for Piazzale Roma instead, our routing between the two is about 99.2 miles (159.6 km) and 1 hr 57 min on empty roads, measured from the city to Trieste rather than back.

A car collected in Trieste and left at the airport is a one-way, and no brand we read prints that fee.

Price it against your line’s transfer, and treat the tolls as a blank we couldn’t fill.

The one-way calculator does the sum — read it with the direction swapped.

Pick the desk by its weekend hours first and its price second. Then put the real drop-off in the search.

For a late return before a flight, the airport is the safe drop. Our write-up of Discover Cars covers its deposit and coverage.

Fees, hours and fares on this page were read Oct 3, 2026. Each dollar figure is converted at the European Central Bank’s Oct 2 reference rate, about $1.12 to the euro, and your card’s rate will be its own.