Paying for Private Tours in St. Petersburg

[LindaandJeff]

I was just reading the thread about people having money stolen from their cabin, so now I am worried about bringing cash to pay for our private tour...Just curious, since we need to pay for the private tour with SPB in cash or pay a surcharge to use a credit card what are other people who are taking private tours doing? Are you paying in dollars, euros or rubles or are you using a credit card?

[LHT28]

If you are worried You can give it to the purser (in a sealed envelope) to put in their safe.

 

Most cruise lines will do this for you.

[mtnmusic]

I was just reading the thread about people having money stolen from their cabin, so now I am worried about bringing cash to pay for our private tour...Just curious, since we need to pay for the private tour with SPB in cash or pay a surcharge to use a credit card what are other people who are taking private tours doing? Are you paying in dollars, euros or rubles or are you using a credit card?

We're using DenRus and are using a credit card for payment to their parent company in Florida. That way there is no concern about international credit card surcharges or currency exchanges into rubles.

[hrob777]

We paid cash to SPB Tours on the 2nd day of our tours. Paying cash (in new or nearly new bills) saved a 3% credit card fee. I tihnk all 15 members of our group paid cash.

[WeBeGone]

In all of our cruises we've used the safe in our cabin. Never had a problem. We paid SPB in cash.

[Maksim]

Did you pay cash in dollars or rubles? Thanks in advance for your advise. Helen.

[vickykay]

We also paid in cash (US) with Red October last August. No problems with the safe in our room (Celebrity).

[vickykay]

Actually we had brought travelers checks as did not want to carry such large sum of money and just cashed them on the boat.

[WeBeGone]

Did you pay cash in dollars or rubles? Thanks in advance for your advise. Helen.

 

SPB tours requested payment in dollars so that's what we did - 5 crisp new one hundred dollar bills. There was a 3% charge to pay by credit card. Everyone in our group paid in cash.

[PooMan]

You can use an ATM at a bank. Our Debit card charges a 1% international transaction fee at an ATM. 1-3% may be good insurance though. I really don't know how important crisp new $100's are. A St Peter bank inspected carefully but took my smelly $20's without a problem. An the guys around the tourist spot selling things grabbed our dollars no questions asked. They even made change in dollars which they didn't in the other Baltic ports. Just know what the exchange rates are. Currency transactions are easy in Europe for they are used to this sort of thing. I'd hate to be an European with poor English traveling in the USA. Spaceeba can go a long way and you'll get some smiles in Russia.

[Embracedbylife]

We paid cash in USD - kept it in the safe in the room, had no problems!

[LindaandJeff]

SPB tours requested payment in dollars so that's what we did - 5 crisp new one hundred dollar bills. There was a 3% charge to pay by credit card. Everyone in our group paid in cash.

 

WeBeGone - Glad to hear SPB takes hundred dollar bills...that's a lot easier to carry than a bunch of twenties. Just curious though how many people were on your tour since it cost $500? It was a two day tour, right? Was it $500 per person or for 2 people? Sorry, so many questions. But with all of us negotiating with Viktoria separately it's just nice to know how we did!

[cruzisme]

We went to our local bank here in Canada and ordered some hundred dollar bills to pay for our Russia tour coming up.

Wow, we were really surprised at what we got: crisp, new bills, in sequential numbers which I assume meant, never circulated. Also got 20's and 50's and also they were in number sequence.

Thought I would have to order several times to get crisp bills but our bank was wonderful!

[loopyloo33]

Alla Tours gave 5% discount for paying in cash which is what we did. We paid in USD and made sure we had crisp new notes

[PROCRUISE]

Took a 2 day St. Petersburg Tour with Red October on 6/16-17/09. Paid with Visa Card and had no fee added on. We took only American dollars and had no problem anywhere. Sailed on HAL Eurodam and the room safe worked just fine. Highly recommend Red October. Feely free to contact me for further info.

 

PROCRUISE

RN_DEW@YAHOO.COM:)

[remote]

Just wondering how much you paid for this tour?

thanks Beth

[GoLaLaKers]

I just sent all of the paper work for the Visas to the Red October office in NY (group of 16). Paid a deposit with Check. We were told balance can be paid by credit card at the end of the first day. My dad is a part time travel agent for a big agency and they use Red October a lot for their clients going to Russia. Looking at the itinerary I am going to be exhausted at the end of the second day in Russia.

[unclerich]

Returned from our Baltic Tour 2 weeks ago. Have to fully endorse the professionalism, courtesy and accuracy of SPB & Viktoria. Everything went according to plan and more.

We paid in relatively new USD (they actually prefer larger bills) without problem. Our group of 8 was somewhat split between cash and credit card.

Have a great trip!

[GRBlizz]

WeBeGone - Glad to hear SPB takes hundred dollar bills...that's a lot easier to carry than a bunch of twenties. Just curious though how many people were on your tour since it cost $500? It was a two day tour, right? Was it $500 per person or for 2 people? Sorry, so many questions. But with all of us negotiating with Viktoria separately it's just nice to know how we did!

 

We paid $300 per person for two days with Denrus. This was for a 6-person family group, so we had our own van, driver and guide. We felt that was an very good deal, and they did a great job for us. Lunch was extra both days, and the places we went only took rubles, so our guide paid and we paid him back in USD.

[kelfad]

We used travelers checks and cashed them in the night before at the front desk of the ship.

 

We used Alla tours and paid on the second day in dollars. In fact we got a 5% discount for paying in cash. I did not know this until we were paying and she told us of the discount.

 

There were 4 of us and we paid for an extensive strenuous 2 day tour and our total was 1600.00

this looks like a lot of money, but we were only 4 and this included everything. fees, food, early entry, hydrofoil ride, subway ride, etc........ WORTH every penny.

[TSC]

We went with Alla and they gave a 5% discount for cash. She did want crisp bills - was $300 per person or $270 each with the discount and our fee included all transportation, all tickets (museums, hydrofoil, Hermitage, Peterhoff etc.) and lunch both days. Lunch the first day was a bag lunch - but plenty of food and quite tasty. The second day was at a Greek restaurant? which was weird but fun.

I had no trouble carrying that much cash, but if you are really concerned, you could get the cash from the casino?

She collected the money at the start of day 2. My husband had been nervous about paying cash before we got anything in return so he was happy the money wasn't collected at the start of the first day.

Highly recommended. We had a great time (there were 10 in our group.)