Should also mention that im his step dad, the age looks abit weird

JustGrant I think you will find he wont be allowed to book a holiday of his own.

Many tour companies put a minimum age of 17 however, the booking form still has to be signed by a person of 18 who needs to be travelling.

Why not ring your local travel agents to see what advice they can give.

Kath HT Admin

Think you will have problems, at least one member usually has to be over 18 and i think they have to be a parent or guardian (letter signed by the other parents.), like kath says if they were 17 and one was 18 you might of been ok.
Can you or his mum go with them?

It is usually cheaper to book flights and hotels directly (over the net) and seperatly, having said that you coan book flights and hotels together via awebsites like expedia.com, lastminute.com and opodo.com aswell. Expedia can be particulary good for city breaks etc. I fond that trvael agents for this sort of holiday are usually way more expensive, you can often d.i.y rome for almost half the price of a brochure if you know where to look. Also the city breaks in the newspapers, to be honest again thy are ok but you can usually get a week out of the price they offer for 3 nights.
As for where to stay, probably best to get off first base at the moment There are loads of good reviews of hotels on this site and loads of people have been in or around the rome area so you wont be short of advice.
Hope they can go, its such an amazing place to go to.

Thanks for the replies !!! To answer though i unfortunatly am not able to attend the holiday with them. Im in work and the wife enjoys the company of the younger members of the family.

Im going to take your advice and pop into a local travel agents. I did however suspect that they would not be able to fly by themselves but i know of children younger than my son than have flown and had an adult waiting for them at the other end.

I just think how they would enforce that, if i were to tell the travel agency that there would be say an aunt at the other end, how would they know i was telling the truth?

Anyhow, i'll let you know how i get one with the travel agency tommorow.

Thanks

well to answer you question at the end of your post, nearly all if not all airlines operating out of the uk and i would say the same for europe will not let your children even check in unless you have arranged with the airline first, secondly the airline will have a representitive to make sure they board the flight and also another one to meet them the other side who will then hand them over to who ever they would be meeting (such as an aunt or relative) they wont be allowed to fly otherwise. Some airlines wont accept minors for this reason (dont think ryan air do?)
Secondly, even if they could get through i dont think hotels would accept them without an adult anyway. Im not 100% sure on this but i think what im saying is pretty accurate.
It might be worth posting in the flights airlines forum for more advice
also this post CLICK ON ME! has some excellent and relevant advice and information.
Hope this helps.