Milan Duomo’s head of visitor services, Valentina Gallazzi, discusses the shift from physical ticket offices to online bookings, the fight against unauthorized sellers, and how a global strategy is driving 9% revenue growth.
Managing a historic architectural marvel while welcoming a record-breaking 3.5 million visitors a year is no small task. Founded in 1387, the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano is the historic institution responsible for the conservation and promotion of the Duomo, Milan’s iconic cathedral.
Today, the Duomo is not only an active place of worship and an ongoing restoration site, but also the most visited attraction in Milan. To balance the preservation of Italy’s largest church with a modern, seamless visitor experience, the team behind operations at the Duomo relies on a very modern strategy.
Valentina Gallazzi, the Veneranda Fabbrica’s head of visitor services, has been with the institution for more than 15 years. Here, she shares how the Duomo evolved its ticketing strategy and uses data and AI to maximize efficiency and capacity. She details how Veneranda Fabbrica’s long-standing partnership with GetYourGuide helps protect its brand and fight fraud, all while reaching a truly global audience.
You’ve been at the Milan Duomo since 2010. How has the visitor experience evolved in that time?
When I started, the ticketing system was very different. You only paid for the rooftops, the archaeological area, and the museum. The cathedral itself was free. In 2010, we printed 590,000 tickets. We closed our last year with over 3.5 million visitors — our best year ever.
Our management and organization have changed a lot to accommodate this growth. Back then, we had only one door for entry and exit. Now we have four. We shifted our staffing focus heavily toward more impressive customer care, bringing on staff who speak two, three, or four languages. As we moved from printing tickets to digitalization, we were able to reduce the number of cashiers and invest in additional staff to actively take care of visitors.
The Duomo is a major attraction, a place of worship, and an historic monument. How do you handle all that?
The Veneranda Fabbrica has to balance the Duomo’s conservation needs with essential access for the public. First and foremost, it is the Cathedral of Milan, so many celebrations and religious activities take place inside. Our work is shaped by this every day. But, of course, many more people want to just visit.
Visitor flow is incredibly important. We invest a lot of money and staff in it, and the entry fee we introduced in 2015 helps fund it. We even work with AI to implement a predictive system — which will be available on GetYourGuide soon — to forecast crowd levels across different spaces. This helps visitors choose time slots when it is less crowded, and allows us to ensure a balanced coexistence between tourist visits and religious functions, safeguarding access and the sacred moments dedicated to worship.
How do you adapt your product or experience based on those customer needs?
We continuously adapt our product and visitor experience through a combination of data-driven insights and active listening. Visitors’ reviews and feedback help us to improve the visitor experience, both on-site and in the planning phase.
By improving the quality and distribution of pre-visit information, we reduce uncertainty and support a smoother, more enjoyable experience.
When did working with GetYourGuide become part of the strategy?
Partnering with OTAs was a natural progression. At the very beginning, we sold vouchers that were exchanged for physical tickets at the ticket office. The real turning point was during the COVID pandemic, when QR codes really came to the fore and had to be scanned to buy tickets because the physical ticket office was closed.
Our strategy had to change completely, and collaboration with OTAs helped us immensely.
Today, online channels account for more than half of our sales. Five OTAs make up almost 15%, and GetYourGuide accounts for half of that figure. It’s important to give visitors a choice of multiple channels so they can use the one they feel most comfortable with, and GetYourGuide is a reliable platform that people trust.
Has it helped you reach more international travelers?
Absolutely. Milan is becoming a much more international destination. As a nonprofit, we have limited resources, and probably can’t translate our own website into 13 or more languages. Almost 90% of our visitors come from outside Italy, and GetYourGuide’s content is already translated into their languages, so we can speak to them more directly.
If we didn’t work with OTAs, international visitors might buy through unauthorized resellers who translate content into Chinese or Korean and sell through channels like WeChat or TikTok. Or they would have to wait and come directly to the ticket office, which makes our flow management a lot worse.
How does GetYourGuide help you combat unauthorized sellers and protect the Veneranda Fabbrica?
Trust and brand protection are absolutely essential to our business. We deal with unauthorized resellers and misleading websites almost every day. We’ve implemented web monitoring services, completed trademark registrations for our logo, and are even considering registering the names of our tickets as trademarks.
When it comes to OTAs, it can be complex because everyone wants to sell Duomo tickets. I work closely with my GetYourGuide account manager to warn them if I believe there’s an unauthorized reseller on the platform, and they investigate and take it down. I have real confidence that GetYourGuide will work with us to protect our brand.
How do you use the data you get from GetYourGuide in your day-to-day operations?
We are building a data lake, so it’s important for us to analyze the overall picture, from no-show rates to length of stay. From GetYourGuide, the most useful data includes which ticket types and services people purchase, the booking window, and where people come from.
We can see that 46% of visitors come from other European countries, 20% from North America, 9% from Asia, and so on. We use this data to make tangible changes, like expanding our audio guides to include Japanese and Korean.
What other changes have you made?
About two years ago, our combined ticket included the archaeological area where crowd management is particularly tricky — it’s very small and narrow. Our ticket validation system data showed a very low conversion rate of people who bought the combined ticket and actually entered the archaeological area.
Because of this insight, we separated it and created a dedicated ticket just for that area. That meant we could sell more tickets for the other spaces, as we didn’t have to factor the constraints of the archaeological area when issuing them.
How does GetYourGuide stand out compared to other OTAs you work with?
One of the main differences is the collaborative approach and the level of proactive communication we experience with the GetYourGuide team. They support us with timely market insights, benchmarking data, and suggestions for adjusting our product visibility.
The API integration has always been smooth and stable. It all contributes to efficiency and a better visitor experience.
What advice would you give to another operator who might be skeptical about working with OTAs?
I would say that working with OTAs can be a significant opportunity when approached strategically. A strong partnership with a trusted OTA does not replace direct sales — it complements them by reaching markets and travelers who may not otherwise encounter your official channels.
With the right controls in place and clear product guidelines, OTAs can become an important accelerator for growth and brand reach.
You’re already at 3.5 million visitors. Are there still plans for growth?
Yes, but there is a point where we cannot have more people inside the Duomo. We also offer other activities outside the Duomo, such as guided tours of the Candoglia quarries, where we still quarry marble for restoration today.
New technology also interests us: virtual reality tours of the cathedral could be taken from anywhere in the world. It’s about being creative, creating new ways to engage, and not just increasing ticket prices because demand is high. As a nonprofit organization, we have to be affordable for every tourist.
Key takeaways
- Drive record-breaking growth using OTAs’ reach: The Duomo celebrated its best year ever in 2025 with over 3.5 million visitors. The partnership with GetYourGuide continues to drive success, reflecting a 9% year-over-year revenue growth.
- Increase global trust and sales through localization: 89% of visitors come from abroad (with top source markets including France, Germany, Poland, the UK, and the US). GetYourGuide’s localized platform is crucial for engaging international guests in their native languages.
- Minimize unauthorized sellers: The Veneranda Fabbrica works daily to address misleading websites and unauthorized resellers, but close collaboration with GetYourGuide enables it to take down suspicious listings quickly. With a tight group of official ticketing partners, fraud is minimized and easy to spot.
- Prepare for agile booking behavior: A vast majority of guests book just one day before their visit, making an intuitive, real-time online booking presence essential.
- Let data shape the visitor experience: From adding new audio guide languages to restructuring ticket types, the Duomo team uses their own visit data, AI analysis, and demographic data from GetYourGuide to optimize the visitor experience.
