What Has Changed?
On Friday, June 24 2022, Coopculture – the agency responsible for the sale and distribution of tickets and related services at the Colosseum – following a meeting with the Colosseum Archaeological Park, released the following statement:
What this means
What this effectively means is that, from June 25 2022, tour operators and customers buying tickets for the Colosseum, are required to provide the names of the users of the tickets at the time of purchase. Furthermore, these details cannot be changed, and the tickets are non-reimbursable.
This means that, if a person booked on a tour, or who has booked tickets in advance for the Colosseum, becomes sick, has a flight delay, or is unable to attend for any reason, they cannot
- change their ticket for another date or time
- transfer their ticket to another person or agency
- be refunded
It should be noted that, at the time of the original posting of this article, this applies only to two types of tickets – those for the night-time entrance and the very popular Colosseum Underground tour. It is assumed locally in the guided tour industry in Rome, however, that this is only the beginning, and that this policy will gradually be rolled out to all other tickets and services at the Colosseum.
Can We Still Book the Colosseum Underground Tour?
What this means for tour operators, is that we now need to know the names of our clients before we can purchase tickets. For this reason, we at Real Rome Tours have taken the decision to not confirm tours of the Colosseum Underground at the time of booking. When you book this tour with us, you will be required to provide the names of all participants, and you will be asked to authorise the charge to your credit card. We will not charge your credit card, however, until the tour can be confirmed.
We will take your booking request, once received, and attempt to book the tickets required. If successful, we will then confirm your tour, and charge your credit card. If we are unable to secure the tickets you require, we will contact you to see if other arrangements can be made, and if not, we will cancel the booking request and the pre-authorisation on your credit card.
How This Affects our Cancellation Policy
At Real Rome Tours, our cancellation policy has been to allow cancellations up to 24 hours prior to the time of any tour you book with us.
With these new rules, we have to revise this policy for the Colosseum Underground Tour.
As we are not able to change tickets to use for other clients, all sales are final, and not refundable once your tour is confirmed. Please note that this applies to the Colosseum Underground Tour only. Our 24-hour cancellation policy remains in place for all other tours.
If you are not happy with this risk (and we are not happy about it, either), we recommend that you book our Games and Gladiators Tour, instead. This tour – for now – is not affected by this last-minute, effective-immediately, change of policy at the Colosseum, and it includes everything that the Colosseum Underground Tour had – with the exception of an entry into the Underground itself, a visit which lasts 15 minutes. The remaining 3 hours and 45 minutes of the tour is the same, on the Games and Gladiators Tour, which takes you into the Arena, from where you can even look down and see the entirety of the Underground area, as you can see from the video below, taken on a recent Games and Gladiators Tour.
