I was just on the alitalia site investigating the possiblity of a
flight from naples to venice. If you
are on the Italian page, the flight is
about 80 euros, about 96 USD, including
taxes. if you are on the USA site, it is
almost 500 USD for the same flights!!!
So clearly, we would want to purchase these
either from the italian site, if possible,
or arrange to have them booked for us prior
to our arrival, to have a 21 day advance purchase. Have anyone of you dealt with this?

ttt help!!!

I encountered a similar problem for a Rome-Palermo return. The price in Italy was much, much lower. Fortunately, I had a friend in Rome who bought the ticket for me, and I reimbursed her when I arrived in Rome.

I don't know if you can use the Italian Alitalia Web site to buy the ticket.

thanks for your reply Eloise, when I went to paris/brussels in 2003, I encountered the same problem when I was booking train tickets on the Thalys. at the time, I was able to email my information to my Paris hotel, who kindly purchased the tickets for me, and upon checkin, promptly provided the tickets. I wonder if that might work if I ask one of my Italy hotels.......? I want to
make sure I make the 21 day advance
purchase time limit..we aren't leaving
til may, but I like to plan for those
issues like this than can arrise.

You might also try one of the discount airlines.

www.alpieagles.com

flies from Naples to Venice. I don't know whether their dates for May will already be up, but you can try. You can buy tickets online.

I don't know whether your hotel would be prepared to buy the ticket for you or even whether it could. My guess is that a more expensive hotel might be prepared to go to the trouble, but I think they would have to buy it from a travel agency rather than online. It can't hurt to ask.

And you do still have a lot of time between now and May to get things set up.

This same thing happened to me when planning our Italy trip in June 2005.

We needed a flight from Venice to Naples and it was a lot more money to book it on the US site so I booked it on the Italian site, and everything worked out fine (I was a little nervous about it). We had e-tickets so they never had to mail us anything.

jessica-what airline/site did you book on? the alitalia site asks for our country of residence, what did you put in if you used italy?? if it is an eticket, I guess I could enter the address of one of our hotels????

I can't really do comparisons without knowing what dates you are searching - - but have you tried the opodo.co.uk website?

I just picked an arbitrary weekday in February and got a fare of 67.40 GBP (oneway) or 123.40 GBP roundtrip - - perhaps slightly more than 80 euro, but not sure about comparisons - - with or without taxes, on the fare you cite?

And I have no experience with actually buying a ticket on Opodo without having a European credit card... conversion charges? or shipping? (or is all e-itcketing?) - - I don't know... might work for you.

Best wishes,

Rex

Daisy
I just went on the website to try to remember how I did it (it was last winter I booked it)and I kind of walked through the steps until the final payment button. It never asks for an address just names & credit card #.
I may have done it on the UK site not Italy, because I remember my confirmation being in English. But for weeks I was on all of their sites. But for country of residence just pick Italy or the UK (as long as the UK price is as cheap as the Italian site). If you do use the Italian site and don't know Italian just keep the english site open in a different window and you can figure it out.

I called them and received about 300 dollars off each ticket from what the web proposed.

Hi daisy,

You can buy the tickets from http://www.kayak.com
for $245.

This still isn't the same as from Italy.

I checked the price for 4 days from today on www.alitali.it - it was the same.

I think that you stand a very good chance of being able to buy your tickets from a travel agent in Italy, less than a week in advance, for a very good price.

Interestingly, purchasing domestic flights from the Air France USA site costs the same as from the France site.

ira-you are right about the air france site, I experianced the same "sameness"
in airfare, regardless of my "Votre Pay"
Alitalia, so different..
Jesssica-Great advise! Just for drill, I pretended to book the same flights as on the US and Italy sites, just from the UK instead and Voila! I took it as far as the credit card input, but it seems to be all good. The site simply states that you have to pay in Euros, not st pounds, no problem, I will just contact MBNA prior to booking and set the whole thing up. great idea and thanks for all of your help! Now, I just have to convince hubby that,as I explained to him, flying Naples to Venice on Alitalia is like flying San Francisco to Los Angeles. He hates to fly..

Hey Jessica,

Thanks for the tip.

Ordering from the http://www.alitalia.co.uk/
site is the same price as in Italy.

kinda makes you wonder why they want to "bag" us so heavily on the US
site...........hmmmmmmmm

Just to provide a little extra info: I used the opodo.co.uk site to buy Alitalia tickets about 18 months ago. It was Linate<>Naples. I repeatedly got tripped up at the address window, because the UK was the only country option they would give and I live in the US.

Finally, I just put in my US address, let them automatically have their UK option as my country of residence, and proceeded. The only catch came when I put in all my Visa numbers. They redirected me to a Verified by Visa site.

I then called Visa to make sure this was an ok thing, they said go ahead, and I filled all the info out on the Verified by Visa page.

At the end of that, I got redirected to a confirmation page on opodo.co.uk and got my e-ticket confirmation code.

I was a little nervous, and it took awhile to slog through it all, but in the end it was just fine, and I saved a bundle on my Alitalia tickets.

If you select "other countries" on the alitalia site, you will receive the € 80 fare.

yep, you are right. another legit loophole, which I intend to use..still am curious about by USA site thought..

I usually book my tickets through www.edreams.it or expedia but edreams is better.

Hi Greenhouse
>If you select "other countries" on the alitalia site, you will receive the € 80 fare.<

Good tip.

PS,

I checked the price on both www.alitalia.it and www.alpieagles.com for Feb 3, 2006.

Amazingly, Alitalia is 10E less.