A visit to the Colosseum is simply part of it for most tourists in Rome. But because of years of fraud, they mostly had to dig deeper into their pockets for years when the official admission price demands.
It is one of the most famous tourist attractions all over Italy: the Colosseum in Rome. Last year alone, more than tweeting million visitors attracted visitors. However, many of the guests have been ripped off for years – both through the official sales of admission tickets and several tour operators.
The Italian competition authority had followed the suspicion of fraud since 2023 and now a fine of 20 million euros has imposed. At seven million euros, most of the Società Cooperativa Culture – CoopCulture – for short. The official sale of the tickets for the monument from the time of the Roman Empire, as the Italian news channel Rai reported, has been over her since 1997 to 2024. The rest of the punishment affects six tour operators, including Getyourguide Germany.
Ticket purchase at normal price “basically impossible”
Using automated bots online tickets, the tour operators are said to have bought online and thus ensured that there were hardly any tickets available via the official portal at a normal price. On their own pages of the travel companies concerned, customers often had to acquire the tickets in connection with additional services, such as a travel guide.
From the point of view of the competition authority, the CoopCulture has done nothing against the practices of the tour operators. In addition, the company itself reserved a certain number of tickets for its own purposes and thus contributed to the shortage of tickets.
Coop culture was guilty of the unfair competition, since it contributed “in full knowledge of the situation” to “that tickets for the Colosseum were significantly available and not available for a longer period of time,” Rai cited the authority. It was “basically impossible” to buy tickets at the official ticket platform of the ancient amphitheater at a normal price, according to the AFP news agency, it was said in the investigation report.
