Luxury Concierge in Russia
Planning a trip to Russia: the questions people ask first.
Do I need a visa for Russia?
It depends on your passport, and the answer has changed. Brazilians travel visa-free for up to 90 days in any 180. Chinese citizens travel visa-free for up to 30 days under the mutual arrangement now running to 31 December 2027. Many other nationalities use the e-visa. See section 03.
Will my cards work?
No. Foreign Visa and Mastercard do not work in Russia at all, nor do Apple Pay or Google Pay, and foreign UnionPay is unreliable in 2026. This is the single most common way a trip goes wrong, and it is entirely solvable in advance. See section 04.
What a concierge in Russia costs
Two routes. Membership starts at EUR 95 per month for Client Access. A single trip is quoted against the brief instead. Third-party costs are passed through at cost with our fee shown separately.
Is English enough?
Inside international hotels, largely. Beyond them, no. Signage is Cyrillic and English thins out quickly, which is why guiding and interpretation matter more here than in most destinations. Portuguese and Chinese are arranged by prior request.
Where we work in Russia
Moscow and the Golden Ring, Saint Petersburg and the imperial palaces, Kazan and Tatarstan, Sochi and the Black Sea, plus Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and the Trans-Siberian route.
How much notice we need
At least seven days for a simple programme, and considerably more for the Saint Petersburg summer season, the Bolshoi and Mariinsky calendars, or anything built around a specific performance or exhibition.
Russia rewards preparation more than almost anywhere.
For a visitor who arrives prepared, Russia is one of the most rewarding destinations in the world and considerably easier than its reputation suggests: the two capitals are safe, orderly and beautiful, the cultural institutions are among the finest anywhere, the hotels at the top end are genuinely excellent, and the food scene in Moscow has become one of Europe’s most interesting without much of the world noticing.
For a visitor who arrives unprepared, it is a series of small, avoidable failures. A card that does not work. A driver with no shared language. A museum that required booking weeks earlier. A registration requirement nobody mentioned. A domestic leg planned on a map rather than a timetable. None of these are dangerous and all of them are expensive in time and mood. That is what a concierge is genuinely for here, and it is why this page spends more space on visas and payments than on restaurants. Send your dates and what the trip is for and you get one proposal with a final rate attached, confidential from the first message.
The land of the tsars: what people actually come for
The imperial inheritance is the reason most first visits happen, and it is not overstated. Red Square and the Kremlin cathedrals, Saint Basil’s with its impossible silhouette, the Armoury Chamber with the coronation regalia and the Faberge collection, and in Saint Petersburg the Hermitage, the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, Peterhof with its cascades and Catherine Palace with the reconstructed Amber Room.
The difference between seeing these and experiencing them is entirely a matter of arrangement. The Hermitage before opening, with a curator rather than a general guide, is a different building from the Hermitage at noon in July. The Armoury runs on timed sessions that sell out. Peterhof and Tsarskoye Selo are day trips that need a driver who holds the whole day rather than a handover. We book the specific access and the right specialist, and we plan the order of a week so the crowds work for you rather than against.
Moscow: the modern city behind the postcards
The Moscow most visitors imagine is the historic centre. The Moscow that surprises them is everything else: the towers of Moscow City on the river, a restaurant scene that has quietly become one of the most inventive in Europe, Gorky Park and the Garage museum, the reinvented industrial districts, the New Tretyakov, and a nightlife that runs later and better than most European capitals.
It is also a city of enormous scale where the hour decides the day. A well-planned Moscow week alternates the monumental with the contemporary, uses the metro deliberately where it beats a car, and puts the long-lead bookings, the theatre, the tasting menus, the Armoury, in place weeks before arrival. Detail on the Moscow concierge page.
Visas and entry: where BRICS travellers stand
This is where the practical planning starts, and the position is better than most people expect. Brazilian passport holders travel to Russia visa-free for up to 90 days within any 180-day period, for tourism, business, cultural and sports purposes as well as transit, with no invitation or visa support required. It is one of the most generous arrangements Russia has with any country.
Chinese citizens holding ordinary passports travel visa-free for up to 30 days under the mutual arrangement introduced in 2025. Originally set to run to September 2026, it was extended during the May 2026 meetings and now runs to 31 December 2027, with Russia mirroring the same dates. For most other nationalities the electronic visa is the practical route: it now covers 64 countries, allows a stay of 30 days, is valid for 120 days from issue, is single entry, and requires no invitation letter, hotel booking or statement of purpose.
Two cautions we would rather give than leave unsaid. These arrangements change, sometimes at short notice, so the position must be confirmed for your specific nationality and dates at the time of booking rather than taken from any page including this one. And separately from entry rules, registration of foreign nationals inside Russia is a real administrative requirement that hotels handle automatically and private apartments generally do not.
Money: the part that strands unprepared visitors
Say this part plainly, because it is the single most common way a Russian trip goes wrong. Foreign-issued Visa and Mastercard do not work in Russia. Not at some merchants, not with a warning, not at all. Apple Pay and Google Pay do not work either, including when linked to a foreign card. And foreign-issued UnionPay is not a reliable answer in 2026; it has lost dependable acceptance, which is the specific trap for visitors arriving from Asia who reasonably assume it will cover them.
There are two workable positions and a serious programme uses both. A Mir card, the domestic network, can be arranged through Russian banks, including branches at the Moscow and Saint Petersburg airports. And cash, which always works, with one caveat worth knowing before you pack: Russian banks are strict about the physical condition of foreign banknotes and routinely refuse notes with a folded corner, a stain, a pen mark or an older series design. Bring clean, current notes.
We settle this before you fly rather than at a till. It is unglamorous, it is the least interesting thing on the itinerary, and it is the difference between a trip that runs and a trip where somebody is constantly solving a payment problem on your behalf.
Saint Petersburg: palaces, canals and the White Nights
Saint Petersburg is the other half of any serious Russian itinerary and it is a different proposition from Moscow entirely: a planned imperial city of canals, embankments and palace facades, walkable in a way Moscow is not, and built for exactly the kind of unhurried cultural week that most clients actually want.
The season governs everything. The White Nights in June, when the sky never fully darkens, are extraordinary and are also when the city is fullest, the hotels most expensive and the Mariinsky most heavily booked, which is why that period is arranged months rather than weeks ahead. Winter is a genuinely beautiful alternative and considerably easier to book. The Hermitage rewards early or after-hours access more than almost any museum in the world, the Mariinsky and the Yusupov Palace are the bookings people regret leaving late, and Peterhof and Tsarskoye Selo are full days rather than afternoons.
Kazan, Sochi and the Russia beyond the two capitals
Kazan is the capital of Tatarstan and the most common third stop, particularly for visitors from the Islamic world and from Asia. The Kremlin there holds the Qol Sharif Mosque alongside an Orthodox cathedral inside the same walls, which tells you most of what is interesting about the city, and the Tatar food and craft traditions are worth the trip on their own. It also hosts a steady calendar of international forums and sporting events.
Sochi runs on a resort and conference calendar with the Black Sea on one side and the Krasnaya Polyana mountains on the other, giving it a genuine winter season. Beyond those, the Golden Ring towns are the classic short excursion from Moscow, Lake Baikal and the Trans-Siberian are serious undertakings that need real lead time, and Murmansk in winter is the practical base for the northern lights. Each of these is arranged as part of one file rather than handed to a regional operator at the city limit.
Executive transportation and getting between cities
Ground transport in Russia is the backbone of a good trip rather than an accessory to it. In Moscow the traffic is a real constraint, so vehicles are matched to the day and the hour, and we will tell you when the metro beats the car for a particular movement. Drivers are vetted, and for international clients a driver who can actually communicate is worth considerably more than a slightly better vehicle. Security-trained drivers are available where the profile warrants it, and are frequently the sensible middle option between no arrangement and a full protective detail.
Between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the high-speed train is usually the better answer than flying: it is comfortable, punctual, and lands you in the centre of each city rather than at an airport on the edge, which door to door often makes it faster. We will recommend it over a flight when it is right, even though a flight and two transfers would bill more. For the long internal legs, domestic aviation is the practical answer and private aviation is arranged through proper handling. Related: executive transportation.
Close protection, where a programme calls for it
Most visitors to Russia need no protection at all and we will say so rather than sell it. Street crime against foreign visitors in the main cities is low and the centres are heavily policed. Where a principal carries a public profile, where a delegation is commercially sensitive, or where a family simply prefers the arrangement, close protection is available and is delivered by private security organisations licensed by Rosgvardia under the Russian private security law.
One legal point worth knowing before you plan around it: Russian law requires a private security guard to be a citizen of the Russian Federation, so an officer you employ abroad cannot work here. He may travel with you and we will brief him alongside the local team. Full detail on close protection in Russia.
Close protection in RussiaHow the trip is actually put together
One named contact holds the whole programme and stays with it, rather than a queue and a case number. The long-lead items, theatre, private museum access, the best tables, the specific hotel rooms rather than categories, go in first because they are the ones that cannot be fixed later. The practical layer, visas, registration, payment, connectivity, goes in before departure because that is where trips actually fail.
Third-party costs are passed through at cost with our fee shown separately, so you can see which part is ours and which is the supplier. Everything is covered by NDA from the first message, including the fact of the trip. And where something is genuinely unobtainable on your dates you will be told at the enquiry rather than after a deposit, which in a destination this dependent on advance booking is the most useful thing a concierge can offer.
Who uses a concierge in Russia.
Brazilian travellers and families
Visa-free for 90 days and increasingly curious about a destination few of their peers have seen. The work is usually Moscow and Saint Petersburg together, Portuguese-speaking guiding, and the payment problem solved before departure.
Chinese visitors and delegations
Visa-free for 30 days to the end of 2027. The recurring surprise is that a foreign UnionPay card is not dependable here, so the money side matters more for this group than for any other.
Trade and BRICS business visits
Buyers, investors and company delegations needing interpreters, protocol, executive transport and a schedule that stays inside the smallest possible group, with the commercial purpose under NDA.
Opera, ballet and museum travel
Clients whose trip is built around a specific Bolshoi or Mariinsky performance or a particular exhibition, where everything else is arranged around a fixed date booked months ahead.
Family and multi-generational travel
Families wanting the palaces and the cathedrals without the queues, at a pace that works for children and grandparents, with one driver holding the whole day.
High-net-worth and family office
Private clients with property, business or family connections in Russia, for whom discretion about the visit is the service and one accountable contact is the requirement.
What a concierge in Russia actually does.
In most destinations a concierge is largely about access: the table, the ticket, the room. In Russia access matters too, but a larger share of the value sits in removing friction. Getting the entry position right for your nationality. Making sure you can pay for things. Putting a driver and an interpreter in place who can actually resolve something at a desk. Confirming that registration has been handled. These are unglamorous and they are what separates a smooth trip from a frustrating one.
The access half is real as well, and it is genuinely arrangeable: the Hermitage and the Armoury outside public hours, private guiding by curators and specialists rather than general guides, Bolshoi and Mariinsky seats, the palaces at Peterhof and Tsarskoye Selo before the coaches, the restaurants that book out, and the specific hotel room rather than the category. What no honest provider can promise is a sold-out premiere on three days’ notice, and we will tell you that at the enquiry.
Where a programme needs protection, that is a separate licensed service, priced separately and delivered through Rosgvardia-licensed partners. Where it needs vehicles, see executive transportation. Where the trip is Moscow only, the Moscow concierge page goes into the city in detail.
“Russia is not a difficult country to enjoy. It is a difficult country to improvise.”
Plan your trip to Russia
Send your dates, your cities and what the trip is for, and receive one proposal with a final rate attached, confidential from the first message.
Make an enquiryWhat a concierge in Russia costs.
Two routes. Membership starts at EUR 95 per month for Client Access, which suits anyone travelling to Russia more than once or wanting the relationship in place before they need it. A single engagement is quoted against the brief instead, shaped by the cities, the season and how much of the programme depends on long-lead bookings. In both cases third-party costs, hotels, tables, tickets, cars, guides and appointments, are passed through at cost with our fee shown separately.
That separation matters more in Russia than in most markets, because a visitor who cannot use a card and does not speak the language is unusually dependent on whoever is arranging things, and is entitled to see exactly what is a supplier cost and what is a fee. See also executive concierge and becoming a client.
Concierge in related destinations.
Algoz FZ-LLC (Trade License 5033995 | TRN 105119056700001) is licensed by RAKEZ for business-person services and lifestyle development consultancy. Concierge, travel and access services are coordinated with independent local suppliers, and third-party costs are passed through at cost with our fee shown separately. We do not directly provide security, bodyguard or close protection services; where protection forms part of a programme it is executed by licensed third-party partners holding the required local permits (in Russia: private security organisations licensed by Rosgvardia under Law of the Russian Federation No. 2487-1 of 11 March 1992). Clients are responsible for their own visa, entry and sanctions compliance position. Visa, payment and entry rules described here change and should be confirmed for your nationality and dates at the time of booking. All activity complies with UAE law and RAKEZ regulations.