March 8th - Your Questions About St. Petersburg Cruises Answered

Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

The Independent

Places & Travel, Leisure, Society & Culture

3.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2022

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

St. Petersburg is one of the biggest cities involved in cruise line tours, with many operators stopping along the way in the Russian city. But as the invasion of Ukraine continues and Russia becomes evermore a pariah due to sanctions and companies pulling out of doing business there, I've had a lot of correspondence with readers and listeners asking whether they should be thinking again about their cruises that involve St. Petersburg as some cruise lines begin to cancel trips well into the summer.

I may be fatally optimistic, but I hope the awful atrocities in Ukraine will cease soon and the sanctions will have done their part in bringing about change for the better, so my advice is to hold on for now unless you really do feel uneasy about taking a trip to the region - and if you do, I'll talk you through your options.

Of course this podcast is completely free, as is my weekly travel email. You can sign up at independent.co.uk/newsletters.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Simon Corner, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're dreaming of a great escape or actually away and having the time of your life.
0:14.8	Well, an awful lot of people have been in touch with me about trips to St Petersburg in Russia. Of course, the brutal
0:24.5	war waged by Vladimir Putin against Ukraine means that an awful lot of companies have cancelled
0:32.6	trips quite rightly to Russia and pretty much the entire cruise industry has written off the summer.
0:41.7	Personally, I think that's possibly a little hasty. I'm over-optimistic about many things. And one is
0:49.2	that we will see an end to this dreadful conflict sooner rather than later and that perhaps we might
0:58.0	see a change in regime in Russia and it can start coming back into the international fold.
1:06.0	But cruise companies have to make their plans and what they they've been doing is, well, rescheduling the whole messy thing.
1:16.2	Typically, St Petersburg's been the main focal point for Baltic cruises.
1:22.1	Often you stay there for two nights and that allows you to make the most of this absolutely beautiful
1:28.7	Russian city, my complete favourite, and I've checked, travelled right across Russia. This is causing
1:38.5	a lot of problems from a practical point of view because the cruise lines are trying to find
1:43.8	alternative calls and that means
1:47.2	well possibly going to some ports that you've been to before it might mean an extra sea day which is
1:55.6	frankly for those of us who don't really enjoy them and only join cruises to be able to go ashore in lots of interesting
2:02.5	places that's not much good so a lot of people have been in touch and said well um what are my
2:10.2	rights they the only reason i wanted to go to on this baltic cruise was to go to st petersburg
2:16.1	of course there's the added benefit that it's the one
2:18.6	way for British people to get to uh Russia without actually having to go through all the
2:25.0	expensive and complex palava of getting a visa so they're saying I want to cancel
2:34.8	some cruise lines are saying well well, you can't cancel.
2:37.9	It's not a significant change as defined by the package travel regulations.
	...

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