St Petersburg tour payment USD or RUB

[edgeman61]

I was curious if payment for private tours in St Petersburg are handled in USD or Rubles? (if from GB or Eurozone, substitute your currency for USD).

 

I suspect they would prefer a Western currency for stability of value but I could be way off the mark.

 

It wouldn't be that much trouble to get some Rubles prior to our departure but would I just be wasting my time?

 

Thanks for your responses.

[John Bull]

In the interest of certainty and the avoidance of dispute, I'd suggest that you pay in the currency that you've been quoted - which I'm guessing is USD.

 

I'm presuming that for a private tour you have to pay with booking, rather than on-the-day.

So if you've also been quoted in roubles then if that rouble price is significantly better value at today's exchange rates you might want to pay in roubles.

 

But if you buy roubles to pay on the day, the time gap would leave you at the mercy of exchange-rate fluctuations - mebbe you'll win & mebbe you'll lose. As Clint Eastwood would ask you, "do you feel lucky, punk?" ;)

And if for some reason you don't make it to St Petersburg you'll have a pocketful of unusable roubles.

 

Even though we're in the UK, we bought cash USD to pay on-the-day for our tour. Probably poorer value for us than paying by card, but kept life simple.

 

On a minor issue - we always like to have a little local money, so we also bought enough roubles for the guide's tip. Those roubles came in handy at lunchtime and between day & evening tours. Lunches were included in the (Alla) tour, but we wanted to wash them down with a beer & the restaurants accepted only roubles, no plastic. Ditto a bar where we holed-up at the end of a tour to avoid the need to go back to the ship before the evening folklore show. We then made up the consequent tip shortfall in euros (could have also been USD). So we had local pocket-money without the risk of left-over roubles. :)

 

JB :)

Edited May 8, 2015 by John Bull