How WhatToBook works
We are not trying to sell you a holiday. We are trying to stop you buying things you did not need, and to make sure you did not miss the three that genuinely sell out.
The problem we set out to fix
Most travel content answers the question "what should I do in Rome?". By the time someone is three weeks out from a trip, that is no longer the question. They have picked the city. What they actually need to know is which of those things run out, which are worth paying extra for, and which they can decide over breakfast on the second morning.
That gap is where money gets wasted in both directions: people pay for skip-the-line access to places with no queue, and they turn up at the Borghese Gallery without the reservation that has been mandatory for years.
What we actually measure
Every attraction gets a Booking Score from 0 to 100. It measures booking urgency, not quality. A free viewpoint you can walk into at any hour scores near zero and might still be the best thing you do all week.
- Whether entry is timed, capped or ticketed at all
- How far ahead slots typically disappear, and how that changes in peak season
- What the queue looks like without a booking
- How much booking ahead actually saves, in money and in hours
- Whether the door sells tickets at all, and whether that is reliable
- Seasonality: what is true in November is rarely true in July
How we choose which options to show
Most booking sites answer "which ticket?" with forty-seven results and a filter panel. We show three or four, each one the answer to a different question: the best overall, the cheapest, the one for families, the one that gets you in fastest.
If none of them is worth buying, we say so on the page. That is the whole point of the exercise.
How we make money
When you book through one of our partner links we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. That commission is paid on bookings we send, which means we would earn more by telling you to book everything.
We do not, and the scoring makes that visible: a substantial share of everything on this site is rated "no booking needed". If a recommendation ever reads like it was written by the commission rate, we have failed.
How current this is
Prices and booking windows are reviewed continuously and change with the season. Anything time-sensitive on a page reflects the most recent review, but opening hours and ticket rules do occasionally change without notice. Always confirm on the operator page before you pay.