3 days in Venice- travel partner booked a guided tour in english to begin at 9am for Doges Palace, Bridge of Sighs, and St Marks with skip the line status. Multiple texts sent by company to arrive at 8:45am or we would risk ‘losing your place on the tour’
Arrived to discover this is really a self audio guide provided by QR code with no skip the line to St Marks Basilica. Website does NOT label this tour as a self guided tour- audio provided does not include many of the rooms and is brief. It does include skip the line access for Doges Palace and has access to Bridge of Sighs.
Recommend purchasing tickets through the Palace and Basilica directly- their sites are much clearer and you will save $.
Posted by
L'Occitanie, France
11431 posts
Thank you for the warning. I made a purchasing mistake to the Prado in February with a worthless audio tour. Recently this is happening increasingly and for sites in many different countries. The media needs to get information out there in their travel sections .
It’s so widespread that the Louvre has even issued a proactive warning on the Louvre website:
Watch out for ticket fraud! Watch out for ticket fraud: stay vigilant when buying your tickets for the Musée du Louvre. Beware of the current increase in mirror sites. Do not purchase any tickets that supposedly allow you to jump the queue, and never buy your tickets from illicit street vendors. If you do, you may be refused entry to the museum.
Posted by
Southeast US, soon to be Kentucky
4391 posts
I'm sorry you had this experience. Like Elizabeth, I see this popping up more and more. Happily, I have not yet fallen victim. I stick with buying tickets from venues/sites directly, but sometimes it can be a bit of a challenge to make sure you are on the venue's/site's official website and not some mirror website.