Italy fines tour operators almost 20 million euros over Colosseum tickets hoarding

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's antitrust authorization has fined a ticketing institution and six circuit operators astir 20 cardinal euros ($21.7 million) for summons hoarding practices limiting entree to the Roman Colosseum, the regulator said connected Monday.

The AGCM authorization said it had fined CoopCulture, which managed authoritative summons income for the Colosseum from 1997-2024, 7 cardinal euros for failing to forestall automated summons hoarding and for reserving a ample stock of tickets for its ain guided circuit packages.

The AGCM said this behaviour led to the "substantial and prolonged unavailability" of standard-priced tickets for Italy's astir fashionable tourer attraction, forcing consumers to acquisition higher-priced tickets bundled with further services.

Six circuit operators - Tiqets International BV, GetYourGuide Deutschland GmbH, Walks LLC, Italy With Family S.r.l., City Wonders Limited, and Musement S.p.A. - were besides fined for utilizing bundle robots (bots) to bargain tickets successful bulk, contributing to their accelerated disappearance from CoopCulture's website.

The operators past resold the tickets bundled with services specified arsenic guided tours oregon precedence access, often astatine importantly higher prices, the regulator said.

The probe began successful July 2023 aft wide complaints that it was astir intolerable for consumers to bargain tickets to the Colosseum astatine authoritative prices online.

($1 = 0.9227 euros)

(Reporting by Gavin Jones, editing by Gianluca Semeraro and Louise Heavens)