Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal

Great location if you want to be near San Marco. Breakfast was awesome with a teenager. We loved sitting on the deck overlooking the canal for breakfast. Hotel staff is lovely. Get a room with a view of the canal! Hotel can arrange a boat pick up from the airport. Beds were comfortable.

We recently stayed at this hotel to celebrate a very special occasion, as we had just gotten engaged the day before arriving. Prior to our stay, I reached out to the hotel to see if they could help arrange something small for my partner (fully willing to pay), but unfortunately never received any response. From the moment we arrived, the experience was disappointing. While the gentlemen assisting with our luggage were helpful and friendly, the rest of the staff were quite the opposite. At check-in, we mentioned our engagement, hoping for at least a simple acknowledgment, but it was completely brushed off without even a “congratulations,” which felt surprisingly cold. We asked for restaurant recommendations for our celebration and were handed a map with just two places circled, with no explanation or personal touch. It felt like minimal effort at best. The issues continued at checkout. We had left our bags with reception, and when we returned to collect them, we were left waiting for over 20 minutes. We had a boat taxi booked, so this delay caused unnecessary stress and we had to rush the staff to retrieve them. Overall, aside from the location, this hotel fell far below expectations. The lack of communication, poor service, and indifferent attitude made what should have been a memorable celebration feel disappointing. We regret spending our money here and would not recommend this hotel to others.

Beautiful hotel. Right on the grand canal. Wonderful decor. Great staff, very helpful

As mentioned the location is terrific. The water taxi and gondola stops right in front of the hotel, it’s a long and narrow hotel with some rooms on the grand Canal. The rooms are really cute and well appointed. The lobby is above average. It’s definitely a uniquely Venetian experience. The breakfast is more than adequate but not stellar. They only have 18 odd tables and they are 91+ rooms in the hotel so there are several situations where you will witness entitled guests and harassed hotel staff shouting at each other for a table with a perfect view which is always a damper on the entire mood in the breakfast area. But I think it’s more than that, the front desk staff and the concierge are just not welcoming in the way that one is used to if you travel to a lot of good hotels worldwide. Not the ideal guest facing staff for the hospitality business, but even further than that, if they had been my employees, I would have fired them for being too fragile to meaningfully contribute to the business. That points to a more systemic problem: either with the management or with the lack of good staff in Venice. I hate to compare it to a much better competitor hotel in Venice but we stayed at the Danieli a few years ago and the visit was just amazing from the first smile as you entered to the warm invitation to return as we left. Unfortunately, the Danieli is temporarily closed for a full renovation so we had to book this as a second choice, hoping for a somewhat comparable level of service and elegance, but it was not meant to be. In short, this is not the refined hotel experience that we would return to.

A marvelous hotel experience, from the location, to the staff, to the amenities. I cannot recommend this hotel highly enough.