Tours to Russia is one of the hottest commodities on the American travel market and agents desperately look for trustworthy suppliers. How do you choose a tour to Russia for yourself or for your customer?

Search "tours to Russia" on Google and you will see quite a lot of firms offering tours to Russia. Most of them are intermediaries, which is not necessarily bad - a necessary link. Large western operators are reluctant to devise their own tours to Russia. Russian tourist market remains fragmented, dominated by small Russian-based firms, and flinching and unclear rules of the game. Russian tour operators, on the other hand, being small, are inept in promoting their products abroad.

So what is the best way to purchase tours to Russia? You could buy a tour to Russia directly from a Russian tour operator, but be prepared to face language barriers and strange business practices that westerners are not used to. Also be prepared that you will be asked to send your money abroad (forget about using credit cards). Alternatively, you can buy tours to Russia from an intermediary located in your country, but be prepared to pay much higher prices. For example, agent mark ups for tours to Russia make up to 50% of total price.

Since demand for tours to Russia is price elastic there are very few commercial tourist going to Russia. There are very many foreigners going to Russia from all over the world and you can see it on the streets of Moscow anywhere you go. But they all seem to get there on their own, for business, visiting friends and very few on commercial tours to Russia.

Don't expect western tour operators to move into Russia. It's too far, too costly and too dangerous for them. Don't expect Russian tour operators to move to the West. They are too busy providing tours to Russian consumers. Russians are traveling around the world like crazy (30 million trips per year out of 150 mln. total inhabitants is high by any standard). Russians do not hesitate to spend their newly created wealth on seeing the world for few reasons - they could not do it for decades because Soviet's prohibited them, financial markets in Russia remain weak and consumption, including tourist trips, makes a lot of sense to them). So Russian tour operators are still struggling with excess demand and simply lack resources to invest time into creating tours to Russia. Secondly, many of these firms lack experience necessary to work with western customers. They are not comfortable with internet technologies, online payments (because those are still under evolved in Russia).

What's the alternative?

Yes, you are now visiting a website of Travel All Russia, LLC. It is a US-based travel agency specializing on tours to Russia. Our philosophy is to find our customers absolutely the best price possible. To accomplish this we had to rethink the pricing model that has been used in the industry. Traditional way to sell tours to Russia is to take a tour from a Russian tour operator, mark it up 20-50% and sell it to Western customers. Travel All Russia's way is to find out what customer wants to see, find the best deal possible and then mark it up by $200 or so dollars. Half of the mark up is used to pay for visa expenses and the other half to Travel All Russia.