Question for those who booked private tours in St Petersburg

Wondering what the time frame is for getting the “visa” or tour ticket needed to exit the ship. We sail in a month. I understand it will be emailed to us in advance. I have emailed our guide but it is generally a 24 hour response time so thought I would ask here as this community is quick to respond and be helpful. Thanks.

Wondering what the time frame is for getting the “visa” or tour ticket needed to exit the ship. We sail in a month. I understand it will be emailed to us in advance. I have emailed our guide but it is generally a 24 hour response time so thought I would ask here as this community is quick to respond and be helpful. Thanks.

with a month to go you should be OK as when booked our private tour and sent passport info got tour tickets within a few days

mind you we booked last year for trip July this year!

Fabnforty, when did you send passport info? We booked this three months ago, final payment being made this week. We are a party of six and one person made the reservation. Can’t reach them so don’t know if they have submitted passport info yet or not.

Fabnforty, when did you send passport info? We booked this three months ago, final payment being made this week. We are a party of six and one person made the reservation. Can’t reach them so don’t know if they have submitted passport info yet or not.

When we booked our Tour with Alla Tours I had to enter all of our passport numbers and a few days later our tickets were available to print.

Fabnforty, when did you send passport info? We booked this three months ago, final payment being made this week. We are a party of six and one person made the reservation. Can’t reach them so don’t know if they have submitted passport info yet or not.

You should contact the tour company directly via email - they will be able to give you this information. Since you sail a month from now you still have ample time to submit your passport information in the event that it has not already been submitted. I believe the cut-off for delivering all passport information to immigration is 7 days - so, as long as you have all your data submitted prior to the cut-off, you will be fine. Your tour ticket & passport will get you through immigration.

Fabnforty, when did you send passport info? We booked this three months ago, final payment being made this week. We are a party of six and one person made the reservation. Can’t reach them so don’t know if they have submitted passport info yet or not.

If you have the name of the person who booked the tour then contact the tour operator to be sure you have a tour & ask for your tour ticket to be sent to you

Don't forget to print your tour tickets in advance. As far I understand these tickets must be printed.

Jess

Seems you need to print a copy of the tour ticket for each person in the group and not just one copy for the whole group.

Fabnforty, when did you send passport info? We booked this three months ago, final payment being made this week. We are a party of six and one person made the reservation. Can’t reach them so don’t know if they have submitted passport info yet or not.

we sent passport info as soon as confirmed tour and got links t print out tickets within a few days

who did you book with?

Our booking with Alla was about the same. We got tickets and information within 24 hours after booking.

A question though for anyone on Holland America: Alla tours says we need tickets and passports when we meet them for the tour. How do we get our passports back from Holland America since they take them at the departure point?

 

A question though for anyone on Holland America: Alla tours says we need tickets and passports when we meet them for the tour. How do we get our passports back from Holland America since they take them at the departure point?

St. Petersburg requires everyone to present their passport, whether they are on a ship tour or private tour. HAL will make arrangements for everyone to pick up their passport at a given time before arriving there -- not to worry.

St. Petersburg requires everyone to present their passport, whether they are on a ship tour or private tour. HAL will make arrangements for everyone to pick up their passport at a given time before arriving there -- not to worry.

Thanks for the info!

I booked around March or April for this July. Once we had settled on the itinerary with the company (TJ), they asked for our info quite quickly and after a few days submitted the tickets to us. However we did not need to pay anything until the tour itself. I might be a little worried if they are demanding payment but have not provided any documentation yet. Which company is it?

Our booking with Alla was about the same. We got tickets and information within 24 hours after booking.

 

A question though for anyone on Holland America: Alla tours says we need tickets and passports when we meet them for the tour. How do we get our passports back from Holland America since they take them at the departure point?

the ship takes your passports?? why? NCL did not do this

I booked a few months ago with SPB tours, submitted passport info and had a link to tickets within 24 hours

the ship takes your passports?? why? NCL did not do this

I am currently on a HAL Prinsendam Baltic cruise and our passports were not retained by the ship. They only scanned it at boarding and then gave it right back to us.

Another interested person on why they took your passport. Nobody's taking mine:)

In some cases, port authorities require that the ship present the passports of all passengers during clearance, even though the passengers themselves do not need to appear. In those cases, the ship will often collect all passports at embarkation and return them later. This is less common in the Baltics, since most of the Schengen ports do not request them.

Immigration and port authority procedures do vary with time and circumstances, so what holds true in one case may not hold true in others. In cases where the ship does collect and hold all of the passports, it is possible to get your passport back from the purser's desk under certain circumstances, but from my experience, it can require a fair amount of patience (and you will need to return it for any further group-clearance operations).

Edited to add: While I have not experienced this in the Baltics, I have had it happen in other places. I can't recall all of them, but it certainly happened in East Asia, where our passports came back with immigration stamps for Vietnam (and maybe a few other countries) and an Arctic trip where we were stamped for entry at a very remote town in Greenland.

When we booked our Tour with Alla Tours I had to enter all of our passport numbers and a few days later our tickets were available to print.

Yes, this was also our experience too, but we also booked with Alla.

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We were on a Baltic cruise last month on Cunard Queen Victoria and our passports were not retained by the ship.

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We just returned from our Baltic Cruise, on Silversea Spirit.

Re: Private tours, we used Tzarina Tours, a smaller company, for our private tours, and we highly recommend. We submitted our passport info and within 1-2 days received our tour tickets via email, which we printed to show immigration at SPB.

Re: Taking of passports. Our ship did take our passports when we boarded, as there was a group clearance for our first port, Helsinki. It felt odd, but seemd to be the way of the ship, so we did as told. We were told to retrieve our passports the day before our arrival at SPB. Then, we kept our passports for the rest of the cruise.

I booked around March or April for this July. Once we had settled on the itinerary with the company (TJ), they asked for our info quite quickly and after a few days submitted the tickets to us. However we did not need to pay anything until the tour itself. I might be a little worried if they are demanding payment but have not provided any documentation yet. Which company is it?

For our 2019 cruise, we looked at several tour companies and found no complaints. We chose TJ for their 3 day itinerary as we do not prepay for the St Petersburg tours, and we can take their Berlin tour and pay along with our SPB tour. Like other tour companies, they take care of the Russian visas. The maximum size of a group with TJ is 12. They seem to be prompt and professional in their communications.

I booked a 2 day STANDARD private group tour with TJ Travel in June for our August 2018 cruise. The booking process was extremely efficient and we did not have to pay a penny in advance. The disembarkation instruction was very detailed and clear. On our 1st day in St. Petersburg, we weren't sure how long it will take to go through the immigration control so we allotted 30 min. to do so, fortunately, there weren't many passengers to go through immigration at that time (7:45) so we breezed through immigration in 10 min. TJ representative was outside the immigration control area with a sign so it's very easy to find it. We were a bit earlier than the meeting time so we walked around the souvenir shops till our meeting time at 8:30. All passengers from different ships had no problem getting through the immigration so we were on time with our tour. There were 9 passengers in a 14 seaters Mercedes van. The seat was a bit small so if we had all 14 passengers, it would have been a very tight sitting. Our tour guide, Lisa, speaks perfect English and processes a broad knowledge of Russian history, our driver, knows his way around town so we always just a step away from our van. We were so fortunate to have both of them as our guides, Lisa also is a certified guide for the Hermitage museum so she showed us most of the "must see" in 2 1/2 hrs. time slot, it was nice to have had an opportunity to visit this museum briefly, we sure will come back to visit this museum in the future. We opted for this tour without lunch so that we could order what we like and I was so pleased with the restaurant choice that Lisa picked. We visited all the places listed on the itinerary, not exactly in the same order but it's totally fine by us. On the 2nd day of our tour, most of us needed to aboard our ship by 4 or 4:30, our last attraction was a visit at Catherine Palace with Amber Room, it was jammed-packed with group tours, the pace was extremely slow, we weren't sure if we could make it back in time, Lisa was able to negotiate with the big group in front of us to by pass them so we could cover all the rooms and still able to make it back in time. We were so happy with TJ Travel and I highly recommend cruise ship passenger to book this private tour, it's way cheaper than the one offered by the cruise ship and it's basically the same itinerary!

I booked a 2 day STANDARD private group tour with TJ Travel in June for our August 2018 cruise. The booking process was extremely efficient and we did not have to pay a penny in advance. The disembarkation instruction was very detailed and clear. On our 1st day in St. Petersburg, we weren't sure how long it will take to go through the immigration control so we allotted 30 min. to do so, fortunately, there weren't many passengers to go through immigration at that time (7:45) so we breezed through immigration in 10 min. TJ representative was outside the immigration control area with a sign so it's very easy to find it. We were a bit earlier than the meeting time so we walked around the souvenir shops till our meeting time at 8:30. All passengers from different ships had no problem getting through the immigration so we were on time with our tour. There were 9 passengers in a 14 seaters Mercedes van. The seat was a bit small so if we had all 14 passengers, it would have been a very tight sitting. Our tour guide, Lisa, speaks perfect English and processes a broad knowledge of Russian history, our driver, knows his way around town so we always just a step away from our van. We were so fortunate to have both of them as our guides, Lisa also is a certified guide for the Hermitage museum so she showed us most of the "must see" in 2 1/2 hrs. time slot, it was nice to have had an opportunity to visit this museum briefly, we sure will come back to visit this museum in the future. We opted for this tour without lunch so that we could order what we like and I was so pleased with the restaurant choice that Lisa picked. We visited all the places listed on the itinerary, not exactly in the same order but it's totally fine by us. On the 2nd day of our tour, most of us needed to aboard our ship by 4 or 4:30, our last attraction was a visit at Catherine Palace with Amber Room, it was jammed-packed with group tours, the pace was extremely slow, we weren't sure if we could make it back in time, Lisa was able to negotiate with the big group in front of us to by pass them so we could cover all the rooms and still able to make it back in time. We were so happy with TJ Travel and I highly recommend cruise ship passenger to book this private tour, it's way cheaper than the one offered by the cruise ship and it's basically the same itinerary!

I wonder if you had the same Lisa we did (I think there are 2)...she was fantastic!

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We used Alla Tours for our two days in St. Petersburg, Russia during our recent cruise with Windstar Tours. We provided Alla Tours with a list of the places we wanted to see, including five hours in the Hermitage. They sent us an itinerary and price for two days with a private guide and driver. Everything was included (tour tickets, water, tourist visa). They provided precise instructions for getting through immigration and finding our guide.

Kate was our guide and Andrei was our driver. We saw everything we wanted to see and never stood in line at any of our stops. Kate had timed tickets for the major stops and used the time very efficiently! She quickly grasped what did and did not interest us. I am a very efficient person and was impressed with every aspect of Alla Tours.