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The Best B&Bs in Venice
How to find, and reserve, the best bed and breakfasts in Venice in every price range and neighborhood
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More on how B&Bs work in Italy: info, tips, and advice
• Introduction
• What to expectThe B&B concept—a handful of rooms run as an inn by a family in their own home—has recently spread throughout Italy and there are now nearly as many B&Bs in central Venice and its outlying islands (around 270) as there are hotels (around 300).
A Venetian bed and breakfast essentially works something like a small hotel that provides breakfast and is located in the owner's home (or at least an a converted apartment in their building). The size is limited to no more than 3–4 rooms or 6–8 beds total.
This usually means a cozy, welcoming, friendly place with a bit more interaction with your hosts than at a hotel—and B&Bs are usually anywhere from 5% to 40% cheaper than hotels.
Expect to pay anywhere from €35 to €140 for a double room at a typical B&B.
Note that there's a thin line (often just which set of local standards, requirements, and legal complications the owner wants to deal with) between what's called a B&B and what's called an affittacamere (rental rooms).
Finding the perfect Venice B&B
The Venice tourist office provides a complete list of all bed and breakfast outfits in town (and allows you to specify neighborhoods, which is nice), but it's simply that: a database list of all the B&Bs in alphabetical order, with five properties per page of search results.
The info on each provided is pretty basic: just name, address, telephone/fax, email and/or website on the search results pages. To get more info (number of rooms and baths, basic amenities, and the price range for a double room) you have to click on each B&B name one at a time—making it tougher to comparison-shop, since you can't look at properties side-by-side. That's it. The websites aren't even linked; you have to cut-and-paste them. A great resource, but one that requires a lot of legwork to use, since you have to click on each entry individually to find out more.
If you want more intel to go on, try using a private booking site that will provide descriptions, user reviews, photographs, and more information to help you make a more informed choice.
Best sites for booking B&Bs in Venice
- note
I've inserted the Venere.com results for Venice in a frame below, but you may want to open it in a separate window instead, to make things like using your browser's "Back" button easier; if you stay on this page, right click to get a browser functions menu for "back" and such.Venere.com (www.venere.com)- Generalist booking site based in Italy with a huge representation of B&Bs—some 62 in Venice alone—(in addition to hotels, apartments, and other options). - BedandBreakfast.com
(www.bedandbreakfast.com
- Booking.com (www.booking.com) - Another general booking site, and one of the few that includes B&Bs (under the category "Guest Accommodations").
- Bed-and-Breakfast.it (www.bed-and-breakfast.it) - Probably the biggest and best of the huge, national services, with more than 10,000 B&Bs across Italy.
- Bed & Breakfast Italia (www.bbitalia.it) - Another major nationwide service, with more than 1,000 members and three quality categories where prices range from €44 to €116 ($52 to $137).
- Generalist booking sites - The following sites have limited listings in Italy (from a few dozen to a few hundred total), but you never know where you'll find the perfect place, so feel free to sift through the offerings: www.innsite.com, www.karenbrown.com, www.lanierbb.com, www.bbonline.com, www.ibbp.com, www.1bbweb.com.
- Airbnb.com (www.airbnb.com) - Bit of an odd, new entry out there, with about a dozen listings in Venice. Not so much a B&B as a network of unofficial (and, one imagines, unregistered with the local authorities) places to stay where the owners will be happy to inflate the old air mattress for you. (That's really just a metaphor; usually, guest bedrooms, futons, or fold-out couches are involved). It's kind of like couchsurfing (only you pay—whatever they want to charge, which can be anywhere from $25 to $250 per night but is usually a great deal), or a hospitality network (only there are no membership fees, and you don't have to be a host yourself; plus, you do have to pay).
Related pages
- More tips and advice on B&Bs in Italy
- Hotels in Venice
- Reid's recommended hotels
- Other alternative accommodations in Venice (apartments, hostels, residence hotels, camping)
- Other lodging options in Italy
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This material was last updated February 2011. All information was accurate at the time.
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