Trenitalia tickets - Register or not?

Register just in case you need to come back. Not a big deal. It is easier being registered.

Thanks. I actually started that process and then got hung up when it required me to add a Tax Code/VAT. Not sure what that is for the US?

I found you can not register if you do not live in Europe.?

I live in the US and registered a few years ago. Things may have changed, or I may have used an Italian address (probably a hotel).

If you live outside of Europe, you can't register. I recently bought tickets for an upcoming trip and received them by email. It's all good.

If you cannot register, make sure you get the PNR number in case the e-mailed tickets get lost somewhere over the Atlantic! If you have the PNR, you can always get your reservation.

Trisha, I just purchased several Trenitalia tickets last month for our upcoming April trip to Italy. The tax code/VAT thing confused me as well. I then went through the process of checking out as a guest without registering, and everything worked just fine!

You will receive confirmation emails from Trenitalia with your tickets as PDFs, so even without registering, you still will receive the official documents that you'll need.

PS: I just checked my ticket PDFs. Those ticket PDF files include the PNR number. It's listed in a big-sized, bold font at the top of each ticket.

Lauren H is right, even as a guest, you will receive a confirmation email and a pdf file with your ticket.

I used my hotel's address many years ago when I first registered. To me registering is imperative because paper gets trashed and emails get deleted. In either of those cases I just log into Trenitalia and reprint.

trisha,

You might also consider buying your tickets at www.trainline.eu as they sell tickets for both Trenitalia and Italo (as well as tickets in a number of different countries). Registration is also required there but it's very easy, and the website is very user friendly. In many cases you'll be able to print the tickets at home and pack them along.

One point to mention though. When registering your credit card on the Trainline website, it may help to have completed the Verified by Visa or MasterCard Securecode options (that helps when making "card not present" transactions). After that purchases should go through easily.

I've never registered and have had no trouble buying tickets online. I'm "anal" about documents, so I both print out the tickets and save them as pdf files on my iPod Touch. I tried to use the e-document this trip, but I couldn't easy find it on the Touch, so I pulled out the paper copy :-)