GetYourGuide reviews: is it legit for Florence tours and tickets? Prices and cancellation

GetYourGuide is a Berlin marketplace for tours and experiences: thousands of local suppliers upload the products, the platform takes the payment, handles support and acts as commercial agent. In Florence it lists more than 500 activities, the widest catalogue after Viator’s.

The verdict in two sentences: it is the right platform for anything with a guide, a stove or a coach in front of it, and it has the single most useful cancellation policy out there. It is the least convincing for a plain state museum ticket, where you pay the mark-up and get nothing back in return.

It suits anyone booking an experience who wants to be able to change their mind until the day before. It does not suit anyone who only wants admission to the Uffizi or the Accademia and already has an official slot available.

Disclosure: we are affiliated with GetYourGuide and receive a commission on bookings made through our links, paid by the platform with no surcharge for you. The official prices quoted below come from the museums’ own sites.

GetYourGuide at a glance

Where it is strongest in Florence

Cooking, wine, walking tours, Tuscan excursions: here GetYourGuide has no rival for depth of catalogue and, above all, for number of ratings. A pasta class with 15,810 reviews at 4.9 is a figure no competitor comes near in Florence.

The Mercato Centrale is the centre of gravity of this segment: almost every class starts there or in the San Lorenzo district, runs two or three hours and includes wine. The practical tip is obvious but it works: book the evening slot, because the midday one burns the hours when the museums are open.

On wine the platform wins for a logistical reason: the Chianti wineries can only be reached with organised transport, and half-day tours with a tasting sit around €50. Day trips to Pisa, Siena and San Gimignano also carry the highest review volumes here.

Walking tours complete the picture. The Medici tour starts at €12 and holds 4.8 from more than two thousand ratings; the main-sights one sits at €28 with 4.6 from nearly six thousand. You will find the comparison with equivalent products on city tours.

Where it is weakest: state museum tickets

On a plain admission ticket GetYourGuide does what every reseller does: it adds a margin. The Uffizi timed ticket with an audio guide costs €34 against the €29 of the official advance sale and the €25 same-day price; the “official” David is sold at €42 against the €24 of B-ticket (€20 plus a €4 booking fee).

There are far cheaper products — Uffizi admission with an audio guide at €16 — but those are afternoon slots, the ones the official price list sells at €16 on the day and €20 in advance. One of those very listings spells it out, quoting the €29 timed ticket.

Worth flagging too: the Firenze Card sold at €94 against the official €85. Before buying it, look at the Florence Pass page: the value calculation changes a lot depending on how many museums you actually visit.

One thing the platform states and that is worth knowing: the page carries a disclosure that suppliers can raise their commissions and that ranking is algorithmic. The first result is not the best one, it is the one the algorithm picked.

GetYourGuide cancellation, refunds and support

This is the most serious reason to buy here. The general terms provide a full refund for any cancellation made more than 24 hours before the activity starts; within 24 hours, or for a no-show, nothing is refunded. Some products have their own conditions, always shown on the listing.

Set against the official channels the advantage is stark: the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Opera del Duomo never refund and never move anything. If your trip could still change, that €5 difference on the ticket is insurance.

Two warnings from the terms: the platform acts as the supplier’s commercial agent, so the service contract is with the supplier; and currency conversion happens at the rate of the moment, with a possible fee on volatile currencies. Pay in euros.

Round-the-clock phone support with an Italian number is rare among OTAs and is a concrete point in its favour.

What the reviews say

At the time of checking Trustpilot gives GetYourGuide 3.9 out of 5 from 56,286 reviews, with 68% five stars and 19% one star. That is the worst figure among the big platforms we examined, and it deserves to be reported as it stands.

Where does it come from? Reading the negative ones, a clear pattern emerges: almost none is about a ticket that never arrived, almost all are about the experience once you are there. Old coaches, guides winging it, itineraries cut short, groups bigger than promised — that is the local supplier, not the platform. The second theme is slow support when a refund has to be negotiated with that supplier.

The contrast with the apps confirms it: 4.9 from 323,000 ratings on the App Store and 4.9 from 363,052 on Google Play. People judging the tool are happy; people judging the day out sometimes are not. The practical consequence is simple: on GetYourGuide you do not choose the platform, you choose the product. Look at the number of reviews before the score, and be wary of a new experience with fifteen ratings.

Pros and cons

In favour

• Free cancellation up to 24 hours before, where the official channels refund nothing.
• The best catalogue in Florence for cooking, wine, walking tours and Tuscan day trips.
• Huge review volumes on individual products: you can choose on real data.
• 24/7 phone support with an Italian number and apps rated 4.9.

Against

• Trustpilot 3.9 with 19% of reviews at one star.
• Quality depends on the local supplier, not on the platform.
• Mark-up on museum tickets: Uffizi €34 against €29, David €42 against €24, Firenze Card €94 against €85.
• Result ordering influenced by commissions, as the page itself declares.

Verdict

3.5 out of 5. GetYourGuide does something no official Florentine channel does: it lets you change your mind up to twenty-four hours before without losing a euro. On a trip built piece by piece, that is worth more than a few euros off.

The low Trustpilot score is real and we are not hiding it, but it says more about the suppliers than about the intermediary: you cut the risk by picking products with thousands of reviews and reading who runs them. We take off a point and a half for the mark-up on state museum tickets, the highest here after the generalist marketplaces, and for support that on refunds tends to bounce you back to the supplier.

This is how we use it: experiences and tours on GetYourGuide, admission tickets on the official channel or on Tiqets when the slot has gone.

Alternatives

For a museum ticket alone with an instant voucher look at Tiqets; for the widest Tuscan day-trip catalogue of all, with the same 24-hour cancellation, there is Viator; if you want tours in Spanish or a tip-based free tour, the reference is Civitatis.

Before booking an experience, also take a look at Mercato Centrale to see what eating well in Florence really costs, and at the Duomo page for the Opera’s three official passes.