DenRus in St. Petersburg

I am about to book with DenRus for our shore excursion in St. Petersburg as they have added the Faberge Museum to their 2 day active itinerary. We are sailing on Royal Princess on 6/25. Has anyone taken a DenRus tour there recently? Most of the comments I can find are old. If so, would you recommend this company? It looks like they are the first one to operate in the city, but maybe have less business now because of their cancellation policy. Thoughts?

We went with them in 2010 and had no complaints. Talking to others who were on our cruise at the time, it would appear all the companies are very professional and 'do what they say on the tin'. A case of 'you pay your money and make your choice'. As I say, they were fine for our group...sorry can't be more helpful.

Simon

I've seen recent posts on another cruisers' website and on TripAdvisor http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g298507-d1477956-Reviews-DenRus-St_Petersburg_Northwestern_District.html

Reports are still very favourable.

No different to the others.:)

Bear in mind there's little or no activity in the winter months.

JB :)

We just got back from 2 days in St. Petersburg, June 2014.

We were extremely happy with with DenRus.

We have been in St. Petersburg years ago (called Leningrad then) for a whole week and knew exactly what we wanted to see this time.

I was very impressed with DenRus communication. The same person, Katja, handled beginning-to-end design of our tour. She was very professional, very helpful and made valuable suggestions about the itinerary. I also liked that we could pay in advance and their excellent cancellation policy. Other companies bring you to crowded souvenir shops where they rent a table to collect payments for a trip, one person at a time. You get stuck there for a long time waiting in line to pay for a trip, using your valuable tour time for that.

Katja matched us with the best guide we've ever had in our many years of travels. Our guide was Lena Toporets.

Lena is highly intelligent, a professional with a great attention to detail and so very pleasant. She made our tour very memorable. We are very grateful to her for a wonderful day in St. Peterburg and Katja for a well-designed custom tour.

I highly recommend DenRus. Ask for Lena as your guide!

Have a great time in St. Petersburg!

As you said, Denrus was the first tour operator in St Petersburg. Since then, many of their original guides, branched out to form their own companies, many, very successfully. When we were looking for a tour company, a few years ago, now, we wrote to what where then, about 4-5 of the major players. Denrus was one of the last to reply and their reply was a basic form letter. I was so unimpressed with that, I immediately crossed them off my list. At that time also, several other who had used Denrus said that they were taken on regular tour buses, something like the ship's cattle calls. That was another reason, many didn't want to use them.

From some of the other responses here, maybe Denrus has woken up to what most of the other tour companies are doing in St Petersburg and reformed their organization. You just cannot sit around saying we were the first and expect people to just sign on.

As for paying in advance, personally, that would completely turn me off. As far as I know most of the other tour companies request payment on the second day, and that suited us just fine. It just rubbed me the wrong way to pay for something from a country like Russia, and if something happened and I couldn't go, how hard would it be to get my money back. They can say what they want, it would still worry me. I think asking for full payment before you do anything is wrong business practice.

When we went, we used SPB Tours, as my budding relationship with Viktoria, the owner was great. She responded toe every email with such caring, and eased our minds about everything. We emailed her constantly, even about the most minor detail and she always responded in a happy, cheerful way, just made us feel better about everything. PLUS, the tour with them was tremendous.

Cheers

Len

Agree with Len above...We also found it best to email the major ones and then easily just "went with our basic gut feeling" and luckily we ended up having an amazing trip of a lifetime using TJ Travel for our private 2 day tour. Enjoy this amazing city and all it has to offer.

We have used DenRus 4 times. In 2006 we used them on a Baltic cruise. They made us feel like esteemed guests and were (and are) professional in all respects. They have helped to become independent visitors when we returned to stay in 2009 , 2011 and 2013. We currently have plans to use their services again in 2015. Our communications with them have been excellent . We just dial a 7 digit phone number (same area code as ours) to speak to a tour adviser Live . They are the only tour company that are American owned and licensed in the U.S. They are also licensed in Russia (see the bottom of this link).

http://denrus.ru/

And communications with DenRus just got easier ! We have used 4 other guide companies in our visits for different venues , but DenRus has always been there for us when we need them.

http://www.denrus.ru/blog/

We just got back from 2 days in St. Petersburg.

I have contacted Red October, SPB, Denrus and TJ looking for a custom private tour for two people.

We went with Denrus the first day and TJ the second day hoping that

at least one company would be good and if we are lucky, then both. Both tours were custom tours for two people.

We were extremely happy with our day with Denrus and very disappointed with TJ's guide the second day.

We have been in St. Petersburg years ago (called Leningrad then) for a whole week and knew exactly what we wanted to see this time around.

There is a big difference organizing a regular group tour and a custom tour.

Also, we have a higher-level of service in US compare to Russia.

Denrus turned out to be the best for us.

I had no worries paying in advance because the company is American-owned (based in Florida), DenRus handled our tour design and booking in a highly professional manner, the payment was by a credit card and DenRus has an excellent cancellation policy. I wanted to see St. Petersburg, not spend my tour time staying in a line at a crowded souvenir shop to pay for our trip.

Let me give you all the details.

Denrus:

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I was very impressed with DenRus communication. The same person, Katja, handled end-to-end the design of our tour. She was very professional, very helpful and made valuable suggestions about the itinerary. I also liked that we could pay in advance with a credit time and their cancellation policy was excellent.

Katja matched us with the best guide we've ever had in our many years of travels. We were very lucky to have Lena Toporets as our guide.

I would highly advise to use DenRus and ask for Lena as your guide! Lena is highly intelligent, a professional with a great attention to detail and so very pleasant. She made our tour very memorable. We are very grateful to her for a wonderful day in St. Peterburg and Katja for a well-designed custom tour.

TJ:

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Our preliminary communication with the company was good. We were assured by TJ that if we bring exact cash for our tour, we could pay our guide at the end of the tour and do not waste our valuable tour time paying at the shop.

Well, it turned out not to be the case. Our guide insisted that we have to pay at the souvenir shop where TJ rents a table. We had to stay in line to pay there. Than our guide could not be found for a long time. It took a chunk of our limited time in St. Petersburg.

Our guide, Julia (Yulia in Russian) was not good. She works as a guide in summer to supplement her income (she is a school teacher). The whole experience turned out somewhat unpleasant. My second day in St. Petersburg was ruined.

Red October:

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I contacted their office in NY. Very inflexible attitude and not service-oriented.

SPB:

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SPB might be OK company for group tours but they made too many mistakes with us though we've already had a complete itinerary with hour-by-hour activities spelled out.

SPB is not equipped to handle custom tours. Every time it was a different person answering our email. It led to repeated mistakes in our itinerary. One of the big repeated mistakes was shortening our itinerary by one hour with the price already agreed upon for an hour-longer tour. Finally, I had to contact the owner of the company, Victoria, about losing an hour. Victoria called this mistake a "minor" mistake. Really?

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I have two suggestions based on my recent experience in June of 2014:

1. Go with DenRus. Ask for Lena Toporets as your guide if she is available for your dates. DenRus website is excellent -http://www.denrus.ru and they are very flexible. They are in Florida, an American-owned company, and their service is excellent.

Other passengers on our ship also happen to have DenRus for a 12-people tour and were very happy with their choice.

2. Your time in St. Petersburg will highly depend on your guide. There are many good guides, I am sure, but there are some not that good (like ours from TJ).

If you have already committed to a tour with another company, I would still recommend to ask for Lena Toporets as your guide - she might work with your company too. Many guides are free-lance and work with different companies.

Have a great time in St. Petersburg!

We used Denrus in July, 2014, and were extremely pleased with them in all aspects.