DenRUS vs RO

[Juliadlf]

Red October has US and Russia office.

Denrus- Russia

Alla Tours -Russia

[emeyers]

Our group of 13 will be on the Constellation's sailing of July 1 and we'll be in St. Petersburg July 6th and 7th. Although Alla herself is already booked for those dates, Alla has secured Elena as our guide and Igor as our driver. Alla has worked all weekend setting up our tour and is arranging lunches at the special restaurants we have requested. She is a gem.

Thanks for those recommending her.

 

There is no doubt you must have a private custom tour if you really want to see everything in the 2 days in St. Petersburg. And, for good measure, it's really less expensive than booking the ship's tours.

 

She takes care of everything including the visa waivers.

 

Ellis

[Mercury]

Just another vote of confidence for Denrus. We toured with them in 2004 and they were fantastic. Our guide was Helen (tall blonde lady) and she was amazing.

 

Enjoy this fascinating city - you will never forget St Petersburg!

[Jill_b]

Red October has US and Russia office.

Denrus- Russia

Alla Tours -Russia

 

I think you have that mixed up, Juliadlf. R.O. has only the Russian business. They have a sales person who is not connected with the company except gets the deposit paid by anyone who clicks on his ads. The ad that is always at the top of the forum is his personal ad which is not linked to R.O. You still only deal with the Russian company if you book a tour. Saying that represents an office is like saying your travel agent has an office in France because they sell referrals to hotels in France. Like everyone on here advises, do directly to R.O is you want their tour instead of the US sales agent because he can not answer many question. I asked a few questions and he was pretty clueless, being mostly concerned with his commission for the referral to R.O.

 

DenRus is a Florida and St Petersburg registered company with offices in both countries. They say they are the only American company registered to have visa free tours in Russia. Learning this, I was less reluctant to pay by credit card to a US bank were I had some protections. From what I've heard there is a big difference between Russian and US business ethics.

 

I do not know anything about Alla so maybe she is Russian but I can't say.

[Juliadlf]

Thanks Jill_b for correcting. Perhaps that is the reason so many people advise to go to the RO St.Petersburg office instead of dealing with the US.

 

DenRus is a Florida and St Petersburg registered company with offices in both countries. They say they are the only American company registered to have visa free tours in Russia. Learning this, I was less reluctant to pay by credit card to a US bank were I had some protections. From what I've heard there is a big difference between Russian and US business ethics.

Could you explain what you mean by this statement?

 

Thanks

Julia

[Utah Family]

Hello! This message is for Sea Day Cruiser, Virgenia, and jrfsss: We are a family of four (2 adults, 2 well-traveled daughters 12 and 15) and we will also be on your cruise this summer. We are interested in doing a tour with DenRus as well, and we wondered about the benefit of creating a group for a custom tour (to include those beautiful subway stations); however, I'm not sure if it is worthwhile to do a custom tour just to add the subways since we like everything the Value Excursion offers. What do you think?

Jo~

[virgenia]

The more I read, the more comfortable I feel with Denrus, so we will probably for sure do the Value Excursion with them. So JRFSSS and Utah Traveler, let's try and work up a group to book with them. We are 2 (possibly 2 more but they have not committed yet), UT is 4, JRFSSS is ? How big a group do we want?

Ginny

[virgenia]

Sorry, guess my last post should have been on the roll call thread. Will try again.

[Jill_b]

Thanks Jill_b for correcting. Perhaps that is the reason so many people advise to go to the RO St.Petersburg office instead of dealing with the US.

 

 

Could you explain what you mean by this statement?

 

Thanks

Julia

I was refering to the warnings my credit card company warned of me when I notified them I was going to use my card for purchases in Russia. They told me they had a lot of credit card fraud reports from visitors returning from Russia. Since I paid for my Value Excursion to DenRus, the whole transaction was based in the USA and I did not have to worry about not having recourse in Russia. That probably does not matter to many but I am not rich and if I got ripped off I would feel terrible if I could not do something about it as can be done with a US company or bank. I ran into a problem in Brazil when I bought a big item and it was defective and found they just laughted at me when I asked for my money back. With a USA company they would have had to return my money.

When I talked to Mike who sells leads to Red October I discovered he did not have any connection with R.O. except advertising them for a cut of the charge from every purchaser who clicks on his ads. I wanted my money to be going to my benefit and I already knew about R.O. so why pay him to find me? After talking with R.O. I got the impression everything is like that with them, everything was controlled by what kickback they got. Only a few restaurants were available to choose from, only one canal cruise and then for only more than 20 people, and only one store and each restriction was justified by them saying "all the others are not safe", and that included a restaurant at the Europe Hotel, known as one of the finest hotel in Eastern Europe.

At that rate they ought to be paying me to use them so they can just collect the kickbacks and commissions. I got none of that from DenRus or Baltic Travel, anything I wanted was fine with them. I had a long list of restaurants I got from recommendations on this forum and cruise-chat.com and R.O. would not allow any of them on their tours. DenRus only said one of them was pretty overpriced for what it was and another one was too far from where I was going to be at lunch time. As it turned out, after many many emails our group settled on the Value Excursion and found our lunches included were great, better than I probably could have found on my own.

[Utah Family]

Ginny~

Hello - let's get off this thread and onto real email. I'm at drott at pcstarnet.com. I have contacted DenRus about a custom tour. I will tell you all about it when you have the chance to write to me. This also goes for JRFSSS as well.

Jo~

[nancycara]

What itineraries have everyone set up? What is the value excursion itinerary? And what are photo fees?

[afireball]

nancycara

 

Asking for everyones itineraries is a pretty broad request :) If you have a set sailing date, you might want to join the roll call for it, if there is one, and check through the postings there.

 

The "Value Tours" are usually referenced to those offered by DenRus (http://www.denrus.ru/) but I'm almost sure Red October (http://www.redoctober.spb.ru/) has them as well.

 

Photo fees are those fees charged by certain inside venues, such as the Hermitage, for using a camera. Fees vary by venue and camera type (still versus video) and may range from $4-$10 USD.

 

Good luck!

[nancycara]

Thank you!

[Jane110]

As many have said, you really can't go wrong with either. We went with RO, but really only because I didn't find out about Denrus til after we started working with RO.

One minor point though: Someone here mentioned that RO can't get you into the Gold Room at the Hermitage unless you're a group of 10. We were a group of 4 and had no problem going in.

 

Also, no matter who you go with I strongly advise keeping your group as small as you can afford. Having a group of only 4 gave us so much flexibility. We spent more time in some places and less in others because the 4 of us easily agreed on where we wanted to spend more or less time. DH and I had been in Russia before for a couple of weeks and our travelling companions had not ever been there, so when we suggested that our guide take us to one of the gorgeous russian supermarkets, we created the time to do it and it was great fun. We also had time to go into some shops that cater to the locals only as well as see the subway.

[VinTek]

One minor point though: Someone here mentioned that RO can't get you into the Gold Room at the Hermitage unless you're a group of 10. We were a group of 4 and had no problem going in.

 

Also, no matter who you go with I strongly advise keeping your group as small as you can afford. Having a group of only 4 gave us so much flexibility. We spent more time in some places and less in others because the 4 of us easily agreed on where we wanted to spend more or less time. DH and I had been in Russia before for a couple of weeks and our travelling companions had not ever been there, so when we suggested that our guide take us to one of the gorgeous russian supermarkets, we created the time to do it and it was great fun. We also had time to go into some shops that cater to the locals only as well as see the subway.

 

We went with RO as well (group of 4) and were able to go to the Gold Room. It seems that RO would combine us with another of their groups to reach the requisite 10 persons. A local docent would give us a lecture on the exhibits in Russian; one of the RO guides would accompany and translate.

 

We'd agree that a group of 4 works very well. It's a bit more expensive than a larger group would be, but the flexibility of being able to tailor our tour to very specific desires was priceless.

[itsjb1]

We will be travelling in July 2006. So far I have found Mike Finn of RO USA very easy to deal with and very prompt in returning emails . When there is something substantial to deal with he does not hesitate to pick up the phone and call. So far he has been very good in trying to accomodate our wishes.