After Covid, Caterina Pepoli launched, together with the team, gondoliers and tour leaders, a development path that transformed the simple gondola ride into a cultural, immersive and recognizable experience.
By Caterina Pepoli, CEO of Venice Tours
When tourism started moving again after Covid, I asked myself a very clear question: does it still make sense to present the gondola as simple transportation?
For me, the answer was no.
The gondola represents the essence of Venice. It is not just a boat, it is not just an iconic image, it is not just an experience to tick off during a trip. The gondola is a world of meanings: it tells the story of the city, its way of living on the water, the work of artisans, the evolution of its symbols, and the deep bond between Venice and its canals.
For this reason, once the hardest phase of the pandemic was over, I began working with my team on a precise idea: letting people experience the gondola in a different way. Not simply taking the customer on board, but helping them understand what they are really experiencing. Because the gondola, by itself, does not explain itself. It must be revealed.
This work was not born abstractly at a desk. It grew over time together with the people who truly know this world: the gondoliers we work with most closely, our tour leaders, the operations and marketing staff, and all the people who transform a service into an experience every day. Year after year we added one piece, refined one explanation, improved one step, built a stronger narrative. It was a progressive path, not an extemporaneous operation.
From this vision came two formats that today represent the heart of our offer: Grand Canal Gondola Experience with Live Commentary™ and Grand Canal Gondola Ride with App Commentary. Today, the first collects over 16,400 reviews on GetYourGuide and over 4,200 reviews on Viator; the second exceeds 22,100 reviews on GetYourGuide. A further product connected to the Gallery, Charming Gondola Ride on the Grand Canal & Gondola Gallery™, exceeds 1,300 reviews on Viator. For this reason, today we can solidly say that our formats are among the most reviewed gondola experiences online.
What sets us apart, however, is not only commercial traction or review volume. The real point is that we have built a format that begins before boarding and continues beyond the gondola ride. In the Live Commentary version, the story continues at the Gondola Gallery, where visitors discover the secrets, craftsmanship and traditions of the Venetian gondola, see a gondola displayed in section, and experience a 3D journey through Venice of past centuries. This same structure has also been reaffirmed in the content you have recently defined for the product overview.
The Gondola Gallery is not an accessory to the tour: it is an integral part of the format’s positioning. In the most recent internal materials, it is described as the place to be increasingly enhanced, linking it to the gondola tour and making it become the place where the traditions of the gondola are preserved and told. Among the contents to be developed are the Grand Canal through the centuries, the Rialto Bridge, St. Mark’s Basin, the reconstructed felze, the forcola, the ferro, the sectioned gondola, and the story of its historical evolution. It is precisely this cultural depth that makes the product different from a standard ride.
There is then another important aspect: the brand. Internally, you also worked so that the project would emerge as Gondola Experience™, with its own autonomous and recognizable identity, so much so that, in an operational discussion on the dedicated site, the wish is explicitly stated that the listing should appear as Gondola ExperienceTM, perceived as the official site, and not simply as Venice Tours resale. This reinforces the positioning of the format as a proprietary asset and not as a generic product.
From my point of view, the value of this project lies precisely here: having transformed a widely imitated service into an experience with content, structure and identity. The gondola remains the heart, but around that heart we have built explanation, heritage, storytelling, visual immersion, customer orientation, and a more authentic key to reading the city.
This journey has also obtained a significant international recognition. Tiqets named Venice Gondola Ride with Commentary, Italy as the winner of the Best Activity category at the Remarkable Venue Awards 2023, citing the Venice City Tours product among the global winners of the year. It is an important step, because it confirms that the format has not only commercial strength, but also market recognition.
For me, in any case, the most important result is not only the award and not only the numbers. The real result is that today those who choose this experience do not leave saying only “I took a gondola ride,” but can leave saying: “I understood something more about Venice.”
And this, in the end, is the meaning of the work done with the team, with the gondoliers and with the tour leaders in these years: taking one of the strongest symbols of the city and giving it back its depth, context and value.
Many sell a gondola.
We chose to build a world around the gondola.
