New Way to Buy Italy Train Tickets (with Discounts!)

WhyGo Italy is excited to announce a new Italian rail tool for booking train tickets in Italy.

See that search box at the top of this page? That’s a brand new booking tool WhyGo Italy is excited to bring to you. You’ll find it in lots of places around the site now, so when you’re looking for schedules and fares for train tickets in Italy it’ll be at your fingertips – and it comes with some pretty sweet perks, too.

You know how much I love train travel in Italy, and although you can certainly arrive in the country without a single train ticket and book your whole trip once you get there, there’s much to be said for booking train tickets ahead of time if you know what your itinerary is.

There have long been sites for booking tickets online, but none of them had access to the sometimes steeply-discounted tickets Trenitalia offered to people booking up to 60 days in advance on its official website. Of course, booking directly with Trenitalia has also long been a huge challenge for anyone who doesn’t have an Italian credit card.

This new Italian rail tool gives you access to the same discounts Trenitalia offers on Italy train tickets, and you can use any credit card you like. Anywhere you see the ticket search box (shown at the top and bottom of this page, as well as other train travel pages on the site), you can plug in your travel information to see what your ticket options – and savings – are.

Here are the big benefits to booking your Italy train tickets through WhyGo Italy:

• Big Ticket Discounts: Who doesn’t love saving money? Booking train tickets on WhyGo Italy means you’ll have access to all the discounts Trenitalia offers, often as much as 30% off the regular ticket price. The discount depends on what type of train you take, what your route is, and when you book your ticket.
• No Lines: Vacations are no time to wait in long lines, especially when you can avoid it. Book your tickets and reservations before you leave home and you don’t have to wait in the train station ticket lines – an especially nice perk in the high season when those lines can be daunting.
• No Shipping Fees & Time: Rather than needing to buy tickets weeks in advance so they can be shipped to you, these Italy rail tickets are e-tickets. You’ll get a confirmation number and instructions via email as soon as you purchase your tickets or reservations. (Read more about how the e-tickets work below.)
• No Credit Card Restrictions: Trenitalia’s site is getting to be more user-friendly than it used to be, but although they’ve made some recent improvements there’s still no guarantee that you’ll be able to use your non-Italian credit card on their site. Some people have been lucky, but it’s arbitrary – and it’s largely in Italian. With WhyGo Italy, you can use any credit card – and the transactions are all in English.
• Tickets or Reservations: If you only need train tickets, you can buy just tickets. If you’ve already got an Italy Rail Pass – which is the same as a ticket – and only need reservations for some train trips, you can buy reservations alone. You have the flexibility to buy exactly what you need.
• Transactions in U.S. Dollars: While this benefit only applies to our customers in the United States, that’s a big enough portion of our readers that we felt it was a benefit worth mentioning. Because the transactions on WhyGo Italy are in U.S. dollars, that means no euro/dollar exchange or transaction fees – which can add up to quite a bit of savings.

We’re very excited about this new opportunity for WhyGo Italy readers to get a better deal on Italy train tickets, not to mention avoid ticket lines at the station, and we hope you find this Italian rail tool useful!

How do these e-tickets work?

The tickets you’ll buy using the service on WhyGo Italy are e-tickets, which means you don’t have to wait to have them shipped to you or pay for said shipping. You print the ticket information, received via email just after you buy your tickets, which means you can buy them right before you leave for Italy.

These e-tickets will have what’s called a PNR, which is a booking confirmation number. The PNR includes all the specifics of the tickets/reservations you booked – date and time of the trip, number of people traveling, etc. You may be able to board the train with only the PNR number, or you may need to print a ticket at a self-service machine in the station before you get on the train – this information will be in the email confirmation you receive, so you’ll know what you need to do long before you get to the station.

Note that if your train trip starts somewhere outside Italy and you’re traveling into Italy – from Paris to Rome, for instance – you won’t be able to use e-tickets alone. Printed tickets will be mailed to you for trips starting outside Italy.