Beware these rip-off attraction tickets on Viator on your next city break
Would you pay £93 to be escorted to a lift to ascend the Eiffel Tower when you can buy a ticket directly and go up by yourself for just £31?
That’s one of the rip-off tickets Which? found when perusing Viator, the self-proclaimed ‘world’s largest online marketplace for tours, activities and attractions', owned by TripAdvisor.
The company selling this Eiffel Tower ticket on Viator - Global Tours and Tickets - is based in Turkey.
For the £93 ticket, there’s no guided tour or historical background. A representative simply queues with you in the timed ticket queue, joins you in the lift up to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower, but doesn’t take you to the summit. You could have done this yourself, without an escort, for a third of the cost if you’d booked your entrance ticket on the Eiffel Tower’s website directly.
This iconic Parisian attraction isn’t the only target of these rip-off sellers. We found a Slovakian-based company selling tickets to the Louvre Museum on Viator’s platform for £40, but they’re £19 when bought directly from the Louvre’s website.
The spiel attached suggests you’ll ‘skip the waiting around’, meaning you can ‘head straight inside'. But these are just timed entrance tickets - the exact same ticket that the Louvre sells for less than half the price. We think this ticket description is misleading. We pointed this out to Viator, as well as the company selling them on Viator, BarcaForToursits [sic], which did not respond.
Which? also approached Global Tours and Tickets for a comment on its Eiffel Tower tickets, but it didn't respond either.
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How are companies getting away with selling these tickets?
Unsuspecting tourists may not know the standard entrance fee for attractions in other countries, giving companies an opportunity to resell tickets offering the bare minimum at a rip-off price.
Plus, there is no EU law prohibiting selling tickets at a markup.
Since it’s not illegal, tour companies can buy large quantities of tickets from some attractions for resale. It not only means that tourists end up paying as much as triple for a ticket, but also that there are potentially fewer tickets available to buy directly on attraction sites.
For instance, we attempted to book a ticket to the summit of the Eiffel Tower for 27 July - just 11 days in advance - directly on the website, but none were available for the summit. However, with Global Tours and Tickets, there were still four timeslots available to purchase at three times the price they would have been when booked direct.
It means that if you have a specific date in mind, you might find yourself forced to pay extortionate sums, due to the sheer volume of tickets snapped up by tour companies.
We asked the Eiffel Tower if it thinks it should limit the availability of tickets to tour companies, to enable more tourists to purchase tickets directly, but it didn't respond.
Tour companies reselling tickets with no added benefits
The Eiffel Tower does, however, prohibit ‘dry resale,’ demanding that tour companies only resell tickets if they provide, at a minimum, ‘a physical representative' who will accompany tourists up to the second floor of the monument. Global Tours and Tickets complies with this bare minimum stipulation.
The Louvre has stricter guidelines. The name on your ticket should match the name on your ID, and staff may turn you away if it doesn’t, which makes tickets more difficult to resell. Nor can tour companies buy tickets en masse without express permission - you have to apply to take a group, such as school students. It has no connection with websites or companies that resell tickets.
When we approached the Louvre, it said it’s aware of the issues Which? has raised and is liaising with websites such as Viator.
The Louvre told us: ‘The only way to guarantee entry to the Louvre, especially during peak periods, is to purchase tickets from its official ticketing service. If tickets are in short supply, alternative sources are likely to be fraudulent.’
Which? approached Viator to determine whether it has any rules prohibiting companies from selling marked-up tickets that offer no additional value compared to booking directly. We also asked if the marketplace would consider adding a disclaimer to alert customers that ticket prices might be cheaper on the attraction's website. However, it did not respond.
Find our more ways to save on city break attractions for your next city break
How to avoid paying over the odds for attraction tickets
Always check the official attraction website for tickets. You can guarantee that they’ll be legitimate and won’t be pricier than they should be. When searching for the official site, ignore sponsored links that may appear first in Google; these are likely to be ads by third parties.
If you do book through a third party, remember to compare the cost with the attraction to see how much extra you’re paying. Plenty of legitimate companies sell historical tours and offer proper guides who provide background information and history about various attractions - this may well be worth paying more for.
Read lots of reviews to get an idea of what you’re getting for your money. We noticed a few companies on Viator selling Eiffel Tower tickets with mixed reviews - some customers claimed that their guide only spoke for five or 10 minutes, despite paying double or triple the ticket cost.
Finally, be wary of pricey tickets claiming you’ll skip the line. These are often the same as a timed entry ticket, which you can buy directly from attractions. You may still have to queue. The Eiffel Tower’s website says that there’s no such thing as skip-the-line tickets. Do your research before you book.
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