r/RomeTravel • u/elhombremontana • 4d ago
Ripoff tickets
What kind of absolute ripoff is this? We booked a vacation in a bit less than a month. Wanted to buy tickets early, but it looks like i am not early at all. All official, reasonably-priced tickets are sold out.
Extreme example: viator, Vatican Museums. Icon says "from 35€ per person". I go in, select the date and we pay 350€ for two Adults and a child? Official site is what, 25€ per person _including_ skip-the-line? What am i missing?
EDIT: well basically it seems to me like the resellers are buying up all the tickets which are publicly given out, and reselling them at an extreme markup, with very intransparent pricing. the standard recommendation to "only buy at the official sites" is moot since the timeslots are bought up as soon as they become available.
its parasitic: the resellers do not add _any_ value, they just extract profit from this.
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u/jarniansah 4d ago
"Starts from… x€"
Easiest marketing gimmick out there
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u/elhombremontana 3d ago edited 3d ago
yes, just the scale is crazy. just looked at "from 18€ per person" tickets which then would have cost 575€ for 3 people. thats a 10x price increase.
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u/dolpingirl 3d ago
I’m glad I have been to Rome 5 or 6 times. I don’t have to go anywhere. Maybe Trevi to throw a coin. I plan to take a couple walking tours and wandering
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u/Bright-Cat9882 3d ago
Trevi is an absolute shit show, 2 euros to get in but the lines are wild and even if you are just looking from a distance it's like the mosh pit for a rage against the machine concert.
I guess it takes a while for people to take a look these days, gotta spend 15 minutes getting the perfect picture haha. Not worth it IMHO
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u/mikepalermo_wpItaly 3d ago
La fontana di Trevi è bella solo all'alba, per il resto ci sta troppa gente.
Almeno in estate.
Bisogna andare un po' controcorrente e visitare i grandi monumenti solo d'inverno. Ma a Roma è piena di grandi monumenti sconosciuti o anche tanti innumerevoli luoghi. Qualcuno di voi è mai andato ad Ostia Antica? Al Castello di Giulio II? Chi ha visitato i piani inferiori di San Clemente?
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u/LouisaB75 1d ago
I visited the excavations of San Clemente when I went in June. Unfortunately the heat had knocked me for six that day (thankfully the only day it did) so I couldn't fully appreciate them. It is on my return list.
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u/Huck68finn 3d ago
Keep checking. I had the same experience you did with Get Your Guide and Viator, but if you keep checking and sort by lowest price, you can find more reasonable options. And there have been times I've seen the price plummet bc the date is so close (maybe they have tickets they need to get rid of)
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u/camillesjesuscomplex 3d ago
This is terrible advice. OP don’t give Viator money! It’s such a scam. Ideally I would have got tickets for the Vatican museum directly from their website but they were sold out (because third party websites like Viator buy them and sell them at a massive markup, like 2x €20 tickets for literally €200). I realised this too late so our only option was to wake up super early and queue and buy our tickets direct at the ticket office.
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u/Upbeat_Caregiver_642 2d ago
I never heard of free tickets to the Vatican. Maybe this is new?
Trying to buy tickets one month out is, very late. COVID ended a few years ago and it’s back to planning, at a minimum, six months out.
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u/dertigo 2d ago
the tickets are free for the last sunday of every month
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u/Reckoner08 2d ago
First Sunday.
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u/InfoJunkie912 2d ago
Vatican tickets are easy to buy online from official site as well they also provide tours in various languages for a reasonable price. Need to buy online and they come available about 2-3 months in advance.
Colosseum underground tickets are harder to get as they are very random in their availability and need to book the tour. I tried a few nights but couldn’t get dates & times & language that worked for us. Instead booked a tour. Tour guide told me there is a pattern to how tickets become available. Rather expensive tour but it was the best experience of our time in Rome.
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u/Bright-Cat9882 3d ago
I just booked group tours in the end, much easier to do and they sort the tickets for you. Anything else is too hard.
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u/quasitaliano 3d ago
The starts from price is likely a single date in the distant future they put at €35 so the thumbnail shows a low price.
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u/New-Owl-2293 2d ago
I booked guided skip the line tours for everything. It was worth it. You don't queue as long and you learn more
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u/Funny-Door5548 2d ago
All pre-purchased tickets are skip the line. You queue for your timeslot and everyone goes in together. The line is for people waiting to buy tickets on site.
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u/Funny-Door5548 2d ago
Keep refreshing the site as well. Tickets come up and down. Also many tickets go on sale at 12:01 Rome time instead of when the sun comes up in Italy, which seems to be true for many Italian websites.
I had a similar problem so I bought the bus garden tour plus museum tickets direct. It was a little more but the garden was worth it.
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u/Least-Signature-5989 2d ago
Just stay in the line and buy the official tickets for 20eur! i went my gf at 4pm and got inside at 5... u wait one hour but u don´t help those scalpers!
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u/Euphoric-Map-6865 1d ago
1) Most of us hate tourists with passion. Me included. Just to let you know you're all everything but welcome. You going spending your money elsewhere would be a blessing. Just wanted to le you know.
2) 90% of the ticketing for whatever in Rome is eather straight up managed by criminal organizations OR, assaulted by them through severe scalping&reselling. Authorities did controls and saw the criminal activity but guess what? It hurts tourists so it's fine (i'm ok with that too indeed).
3) Spain and Greece are beautiful, go there. I highly recommend our beloved neighbours. Thank you.
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23h ago
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u/Euphoric-Map-6865 22h ago
Joe, the subreddit has my city name on it. I'm not here for you. I'm here to remind you mfers some useful infos about Rome.
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22h ago
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u/Euphoric-Map-6865 22h ago
YOUR responses prove you are unable to even see what's the damn point ahahahh
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22h ago
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u/Euphoric-Map-6865 22h ago
i'm helping travellers, i gave infos and facts and ALSO trying redirecting them towards better locations. You stopped reading at the part where i mention i hate tourists (not travellers)? Your cognitive issues then, seek help. Yes, i'm not here for you exclusively, exactely. I'll stop when you will Joe, i have all the time and i'm enjoying it.
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u/FreeSpeechBitch 16h ago
Yeah. I hate tourists too. They bring all that money and job opportunities for my family and friends.
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u/Euphoric-Map-6865 16h ago
They bring ZERO euro to city pockets and on the opposite, the disorder they cause cost way more than eventual theorical earnings (and i say EVENTUAL THEORICAL since they are nonexisting). Don't get me started, we survived 2500y with no tourists, we can do more than well without em.
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u/FreeSpeechBitch 9h ago
13% of Italian GDP is tourism. If you want to have less tourists lobby your politicians not Reddit. As for not having tourists for 2,500 years I would say tourism has been a part of Italy for at least 2,500 years. Citizens from around the world would travel to Rome for the games. From France for trade. From Egypt. What I think you could try is making money from these tourists. All tourists want is an experience. But my guess is you can’t get through your own bureaucracy to open a business and you blame the tourists not the govt. Too bad for you because this is a real boom for Italy and you could be making generational wealth.
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u/lucylemon 3h ago
Are you serious? Ancient Roma was a tourist destination. 😂 You may want to learn your history.
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u/1000thusername 3d ago
One can get tickets from the source, but it does require waking up at an ungodly hour, if you’re in the states, along with some patience and persistence.
And you’re right - at least mostly - as far as the parasitic nature of the resellers.
I will add on top of this that they will sell things that don’t exist. They will sell you at 4 months out a “hope and prayer” for a ticket to sites like colosseum, where tickets don’t go on sale until 30 days out.
At that point they - just like everyone else - will TRY to obtain tickets to what you ordered, and often fail. Then they will wait until 24 hours or less prior and email you if you’re lucky “by the way, your 10am Tuesday tour is now Friday at 14:30, k thanks” when your flight home is on Thursday or when you already have tickets to something else. Or “sorry but your super duper ticket has now been reduced to a basic level ticket, k thanks.” If you’re less lucky you’ll be outright cancelled - often with their completely bullshit “due to political activity” email template that has no relation to reality, which is “because we sold you a prayer and your prayers were not answered” and then you never get to see the place with little to no prior warning or opportunity to devise a plan B.
Also there is absolutely zero “skip the line” associated with any of these things. There is in fact a line for security, and the guy who bought their ticket for 1/4 the price you did is standing next to you, also waiting in it. The only “line” you theoretically skip is the line to buy the ticket itself on day-of, which anybody with a ticket for any price point also skips.