Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - St Petersburg trip

I will preface this with a question- have you ever been to Russia? Do you speak Russian?

I have attached my comments about Russian National Group from my previous post. I would hope that in a tour situation which they perform on a regular basis they would be better, but I cannot recommend them.
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Author: katya_NY
Date: 10/10/2005, 01:37 pm
Russian National Group...
otherwise found at: www.russia-travel.com

I have just returned from 2 weeks in Russia with a group of 19 teenagers, and this company came very close to botching the ENTIRE trip for us. Just for some background information- I have traveled to Russia at least 8 times, and this was my second time shepherding a group from my school. I am a Russian teacher, and I was chaperoning with another Russian teacher from my school.

From the start, it was hard to work with the NYC agency- but my co-worker tried to tell me (repeatedly) that it was just "the Russian way" of doing business... for me, waiting 2 weeks to get an e-mail response is unacceptable, and this was with multiple phone calls in the 2 week span trying to politely request the necessary information.

The RNG was to book our flights, process our visas, book our train tickets to Moscow from StPb, and book our travel itinerary while in Moscow. They managed to individually book our flights (thus making it impossible to request seating together, much less a group rate- which I'm sure gave them a larger commission).

Then, they SAT on our visa order for at least 3 weeks after they were fully processed before returning us the passports, which made US have to pay extra for the express return (as was evident by the processing date on the visas). This was after multiple pleas at the end of the school year, as one of our traveling students was leaving for Greece for the summer, therefore needing his passport back.

We sent our train booking info. in April with specific dates and compartment assignments for our group. We were told that the RNG would not be able to mail us our train tickets, but we could pick them up at the StPb office when we arrived... and when we arrived, they were not there!! In fact, it took another 5 days for the train tickets to be PURCHASED and sent to us, meaning we did not get on the correct train class, as we had paid for.

The last nail in the coffin was when we arrived in Moscow and found out that we were supposed to have registered our visas within 3 days of arriving in Russia- and we had already been there for 11 days already.

This was completely contrary to what the agency had told us before departing, although both my co-chaperone and I were well aware of this being the old policy... but hey, its Russia! Policies change.

Of course, upon checking into the hotel, we learned that this would be a problem for leaving the country, and may cost us $50-$75 per student to remedy the problem at the airport.

When we tried to contact the company to see how they could help us, they were completely defensive, blamed us for the miscommunication, and said there was nothing they could do to help us.

Both my co-chaperone and I were LIVID by this point, knowing that we had done everything possible to make this trip run as it should. Luckily, at the last moment, having the official invitations from the school that hosted us in Saint Petersburg, coupled with our hotel registration in Moscow- we were able to leave the country.

So, to sum it all up- there are MANY other ways of finding reliable companies with which to book your trip. Russia is a wonderful place to visit, and I look forward to bringing a group again someday... but NEVER with Russian National Group!!!

Please feel free to contact me with any questions...

- from Katya