Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido Resort

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Scored on our six-point framework, weighted for an anniversary stay. See our methodology.

Why the Hotel Excelsior for a Venice anniversary?

Because it turns an anniversary into a seaside occasion rather than a city break. The Hotel Excelsior opened on 21 July 1908 on the Adriatic shore of the Lido, the barrier island that shelters the Venice lagoon, and it was built as a statement: a beach landmark in Venetian style with Moorish arches, designed by the architect Giovanni Sardi for the entrepreneur Nicolo Spada. More than a century later it remains the only beach resort in Venice, and since 1932 it has been the official hotel of the Venice Film Festival.

For a couple marking years together, that pairing is the draw. Mornings belong to the private beach and its rows of cabanas on the sand, with a heated outdoor pool for the hours between swims. Evenings belong to a short boat ride across the water to dinner near St Mark's, then a quiet return to the Lido after the day-trippers have gone. It is romance with sea air and cinema history attached, not a room over a canal. The property is currently being restored and renewed under Iconic Hotels and Resorts, which is worth knowing before you book, and that ongoing work is part of why it sits at #7 on our Venice anniversary list rather than higher.

Which room or suite should you request?

Ask for a sea-view room or suite on the Adriatic front, and confirm beach-cabana access when you book. The Excelsior runs to 196 rooms and suites across its Moorish-Venetian buildings, and the ones worth paying for face the Adriatic rather than the interior courtyard or the lagoon side. A front-facing room puts the beach, the cabanas and the sunrise directly below your window, which is the outlook the hotel is known for and the one that makes an anniversary morning.

If you want more space, the suites add sitting rooms and, in the top categories, sea-facing terraces, so request the orientation by name at booking, because Adriatic-front inventory is limited and claimed first for festival dates and peak summer. The 2026 relaunch is also redesigning rooms in waves, so ask whether your category has already been refreshed, since finishes vary during the works. Whatever you choose, tie the room to a cabana on the private beach, the detail that separates the Excelsior from a standard city hotel.

The Lido setting, and how you reach central Venice

You reach central Venice by boat, not on foot, and that is the trade at the heart of a Lido stay. The Excelsior sits on Lungomare Marconi on the Lido di Venezia, an island separated from historic Venice by the lagoon. The hotel runs a complimentary launch across the water to St Mark's, roughly every half hour through the day, and the crossing takes about fifteen minutes. That means the Rialto, the Basilica and the backstreet bacari are all an easy shuttle away, but they are a boat ride rather than a stroll from your door.

In return you get what central Venice cannot offer: a wide sand beach, open sky, a heated outdoor pool and room to breathe, well away from the crush around San Marco. The Lido itself is a genteel residential island with its own restaurants, the Palazzo del Cinema and a long seafront to walk or cycle. For an anniversary, the rhythm suits couples who want the beach and the calm by day and Venice proper by evening. Arrival is part of the pleasure as well, since most guests come in by private water taxi from Venice Marco Polo Airport, roughly thirty minutes across the lagoon.

The private beach and its cabanas

The private beach is the single feature that sets the Excelsior apart from every other Venice hotel. It is the only hotel beach in the city, a broad stretch of Adriatic sand lined with the striped cabanas that have defined the Lido's glamour for more than a century. In high summer, roughly late May to mid-September, the cabanas come out and the beach becomes the centre of the day, and a reserved cabana gives an anniversary couple a private base on the sand for the length of the stay, rarer in Venice than any canal view. The 2026 relaunch is rebuilding this side of the resort around Amu Venice, a new beach club and pool bar set alongside the hotel's heated outdoor pool. Because the beach runs on its own summer calendar, shorter than the overall hotel season, check the beach opening dates against your travel window if a day on the sand is central to the trip.

Dining at the Excelsior

Dining centres on the beach and the sea view rather than a single formal dining room. On the sand, the Elimar beach bar serves from breakfast through to dinner, with Venetian dishes alongside lighter beach fare, so lunch in a swimsuit and dinner as the light drops both happen a few steps from the cabanas. The Blue Bar draws on the hotel's Film Festival history for cocktails and evening music, an easy pre-dinner ritual for an anniversary night.

The 2026 relaunch adds Amu Venice, a new signature terrace restaurant, pool bar and beach club, and restores the historic Palm Court, so the food-and-drink line-up is changing as the refurbishment rolls out; check what is open for your dates. Many couples also use the free launch to eat in Venice itself, booking a cicchetti crawl or a canal-side table near St Mark's and returning to the Lido by boat afterwards. You can mark the occasion with a formal dinner in the city one night and a barefoot supper by the cabanas the next, without changing hotels.

Honest cons: who should skip it

Our counter-recommendation: if you want to wake up on the Grand Canal in the middle of historic Venice, book The St. Regis Venice, and if you would rather have a self-contained island resort with a spa and a full pool complex, the JW Marriott Venice Resort and Spa on its private island is the better fit. Choose the Excelsior when the beach, the sea air and the film-festival glamour are the point of the anniversary.

How it compares with other Venice anniversary hotels

Within our Top 20 Hotels in Venice for an Anniversary it ranks #7, with an aggregate editorial score of 9.6 out of 10. It leads the field on beach and resort character, while the hotels ranked around it lead on canal-side location and central-Venice convenience. If you have already fixed the dates, book at least twelve weeks ahead, as the Adriatic-front rooms and festival-week nights go first. For the full field, see the Venice anniversary ranking.

Frequently asked questions

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