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Reservations on Trenitalia

Posted by on

I have been reading about seat reservations on trains and am so confused! It would be great if you folks can help shed some light and help clarify things.

  1. Should I make reservations for all my train rides? I will be going on 4 different trains throughout my trip. Rome to Venice. Venice to Florence. Florence to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre to Rome.

  2. I am trying to understand how to reserve train seats. I went to the website and tried following steps I found online. I played around with a "mock" reservation. I read somewhere to click on "Global Pass" under the offer menu, which then asks for the "Order number". Do I only have this number after purchasing a ticket? Also when I choose "Global Pass" it only shows the cost for 10 euro up charge of reserving seats and not the whole ticket price.

  3. I also tried without choosing "Global Pass" and kept the offer as "Super Economy" with "Standard" service. I saw that I could still choose seats. Does this mean its letting me make a reservation without choosing and paying extra for "Global Pass"?

Sorry that this may sound confusing...I really hope someone understands my confusion and can help me out! Thank you in advance!

Posted by
138 posts

Hello, Trenitalia website is quite easy to navigate and you should make reservations for long-distance trains in advance. Only local regular trains doesn't really require getting a seat in advance as it will basically a free-seating train.
You just need to choose the stations first ex. Roma Termini - Venezia S.Lucia, then click on from 37Euro(ex) button, choose the correct Service you're paying for. Then tick Choose the seat button and press Continue. In the next window choose the seat you like, again press continue and then simply pay for that! As easy as it is :) Hope this helps

Posted by
8889 posts

Reading between the lines of your question, you have bought, or intend to buy, a rail pass for these trips.
If you have not yet bought it, I advise you not to buy a pass. Rail fares in Italy are cheap. In almost all cases just buying normal tickets from A top B, for each trip, will be cheaper than a pass. And tickets for high speed trains give big (over 50%) discounts for advance purchase.

If you buy normal tickets, these include the reservation where needed, so it is not an issue.

P.S., you talk about "the website", what website do you mean? The best place to buy tickets is the Italian Railway's own website: https://www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en

Posted by
16745 posts

Good advice from Chris: passes are rarely of benefit in Italy so I'd go with point-to-point tickets.

All 'fast' long-distance trains will have seat reservations. As he said, your seat reservations comes with the purchase of your ticket. Shorter-distance regionale trains don't have reservations: you sit anywhere there's a seat. There are often nice price breaks for buying tickets for long-distance trains in advance but the tickets for regionale trains are the same whether bought in advance or just minutes before boarding. These tickets also must be validated (time -stamped) before getting on the train.

Some time with "The Man in the Seat 61" website will be helpful. In addition to Trenitalia, Italo trains service a good amount of Italian cities and have competitive rates so give its site a look for your city-to-city (e,g. Rome to Venice) journeys.

https://www.italotreno.it/en

Posted by
1408 posts

Perhaps you could also benefit from studying https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/trains

A word of warning: if your Rome to Venice trip is just after you arrive, you must decide which trip to reserve or if you want to leave it until you have landed. The price is higher if you buy just before departure, but if you buy the cheap ticket long before then it can only be used on that specific departure. if your plane is delayed you must buy a new ticket anyway.

It all depends on how risk averse you are.

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