What italyplanner.com is
Italyplanner is a travel guide site about Italy, with a section devoted to Tuscany: itineraries, ideas for day trips from Florence and advice on what to see. It is not an agency selling tours through its own checkout. When you find an excursion or a ticket, the link takes you to an outside platform: GetYourGuide, Viator, Tiqets, or products from the Awin and Travelpayouts affiliate networks. If you book, the site earns a commission.
That model is not a problem in itself: it is how many online travel guides work. What matters, though, is how clearly a site says who it is, where its information comes from and how it makes money. On these points Italyplanner leaves some questions open.
Who is behind it
The site says it belongs to the "TourLeaderPro.com Network", a network of licensed tour leaders and guides. We tried to find out who the owner is, and what we found was thin:
- The terms of use have not been filled in. At our last check, where the company name, address, VAT number and contact email should appear, there were still placeholders in square brackets, along the lines of "[COMPANY LEGAL NAME]". It is a template document that was never completed.
- The domain is very new, and tourleaderpro.com was also registered only shortly before. TourLeaderPro appears to be a B2B tour-leader business based in Rome.
- The headline figures are big. The site talks about more than 5,000 pages "without AI-written filler" and more than 10,000 guided tours. Long experience among the people involved is possible, but on a site only a few months old those numbers can't be verified.
None of these points proves bad faith. Taken together, though, they mean that for now you can't be sure who you are dealing with.
What it offers on Tuscany
The free part is made up of articles: where to go, how many days you need, which day trips to take from Florence. For tours and tickets the site sends you to the platforms, so prices and availability are those of GetYourGuide, Viator or Tiqets at the moment you click.
Then there are the paid services, sold directly:
| Service | Stated price |
|---|---|
| Review of an itinerary you have already planned | €49 |
| Tailor-made itinerary | €249 |
| Private days with a guide | from €390 |
The weak point isn't the price: it is that, without a company name in the terms of use, you don't know who is taking your money, which law applies, or who to write to if something goes wrong.
One detail says something about how carefully the content is put together: at our check, the Tuscany page carried a photo of Campo Imperatore, the high plateau of the Gran Sasso, in Abruzzo. Anyone who knows the region notices straight away; someone visiting for the first time doesn't.
Booking, cancellation and support
If you click on a tour and pay on the platform, that platform's rules apply, not Italyplanner's:
- on GetYourGuide the basic rule is a full refund up to 24 hours before, unless the listing says otherwise;
- on Viator every product comes from a third-party supplier, with policies that vary from listing to listing;
- on Tiqets entry tickets are usually non-refundable, while many tours can be cancelled for free up to 24 hours before.
Read the cancellation policy on the listing before you pay, and go to the platform for support. For the services Italyplanner sells itself, on the other hand, we found no refund terms naming an identifiable seller.
What to do instead
For Tuscany, almost all the information that matters can be found at the source, and it often costs less:
- Tower of Pisa: the ticket with the Duomo costs €20 on the Opera della Primaziale Pisana's website. The rules are explained on our page about Pisa.
- Duomo in Siena: the OPA SI PASS is sold by the Opera della Metropolitana. See Siena.
- Day trips from Florence: to compare formats and prices, start from the page on day trips from Florence and from the platform reviews.
- Itinerary: our page on things to do in Tuscany breaks the region down by type of trip.
If you want a paid tailor-made itinerary, choose someone who clearly states their company name, VAT number and address. It is the bare minimum for a service contract.
How to judge a travel guide site, this one included
This applies to Italyplanner and to any site that tells you what to book, ourselves included. Before you trust one, look for four things:
- An identifiable owner, with a company name and address in the legal notes.
- A statement about commissions, written plainly and not tucked away at the bottom.
- Official prices alongside the platforms' prices, so you can see how much extra you are paying.
- Sources, meaning links to the sites of the bodies that run the museums and monuments.
At our last check, Italyplanner was missing precisely the first point, which is the one that carries the most weight. That is why it scores 2 out of 5, one less than leaningtowerpisa.org: both are affiliate-link sites, but that one states at the top who it is and gives correct official prices, whereas here the seller of the paid services can't be identified.
Who it suits, and who it doesn't
It suits you if you want a general idea of Tuscany, want to read a few itinerary suggestions and are then happy to check everything for yourself.
It doesn't suit you if you want to buy a planning service or a private day: as long as the seller's details are missing, the risk is entirely yours. Nor is it suitable as your only source for prices and opening times, which should always be checked on the official site.
Alternatives and comparisons
For the platforms its links point to, read our reviews of GetYourGuide, Viator and Tiqets. A site of the same kind, but devoted only to the Tower of Pisa, is leaningtowerpisa.org. The index of all our reviews is on the operators page.