Private Private Tour in St. Petersburg

I don't know about any St Petersburg trade association or cartel, Stan, but when there's a big change in currency values, shortages of supply, etc businesses will try to take a short-term advantage - it's the way of the world. ;)

Anastasia is a name I've seen a few times before on Cruise Critic & elsewhere. Understandably much less often than the bigger outfits, though just as positive.

But the prices on her website are actually much higher than the others.

For example a private tour with an itinerary which seems to equate to a standard two-day "grand tour", is quoted at $380 pp for a group of 15 or $797 pp :eek: if you're just two.

And the "Feel Yourself Russian" folklore show, quoted at $116 pp for two is double what we paid when the rouble was strong. :eek:

Those prices don't tie in with the figures I've seen on recent threads, but good luck to those like Pompeii who seem to have a bargain.:)

Even if they have to buy their own lunch ;)

Tickets & Tours dot com's website is much less forthcoming, a paucity of info & prices. And the first time I've heard of them.

Just my own observations.

JB :)

I have been researching tours over the past couple months, and after reading CC & TripAdvisor (where an alarming reviews of tours are posted by people with less than 10 - or even less than 5 total reviews ever posted...hmmm). I settled on contacting 7 companies (because I truly wasn't sure if we wanted private, really small(4-6), or the standard up to 16 people. I found that there are a few Tour companies who specialize in the private or 4-6 size tours and would be extremely flexible in your schedule - your call what you want to see. The pricing was $400-$475 range for 4-6. Then I read somewhere that 10 is a great size - which based on other large cities we have toured rang true for me. I started asking about this option. One of the largest operators was totally inflexible, a second one said 'yes, we will guarantee no more than 10, and offer a Small CC discount over what the standard 16 person price is) in their first response to me, and the third large company said 'no less than 16 or prices are higher - (then when I told them that we were going with someone else, they came back and said 'we will go ahead and offer that size to you').

I guess my point is, there does appear to be some flexibility with a couple tour companies if you are persistent. Our visit will be end of May, so by peak season that flexibility may disappear. These tour groups appear to all have quite a bit of business.

Last year I came to St-Petersburg with friends. we are from Malaysia and we booked a private tour from SPB TOURS. At first they offered us a group tour with 10 people, 16 altogether with a flat rate. Price was 300 USD, it was a good price with included lunch and museums. But we really did want to stay in OUR group of friends without any strangers around and that's why we asked SPB TOURS to offer private package. They did it and the price was really good 380 usd as far as I remember. We had a private van with 8 seats and an amazing guide!!! We never expected that they will hire us a guide who is an official expert at the Hermitage Museum.