While dozens of tourist companies around the country are losing their licenses for bad service and fraud, St Petersburg's tourist firms are thriving.
"But that does not mean everything is fine in St Petersburg," said Valery Mitrikov, head of the license section of the Mayor's Office tourism department.
There are 875 companies organizing foreign tourism in St Petersburg. Mr Mitrikov said that while none of them have lost their licenses, several have simply taken clients' money and run.
He said his department has received an increasing number of complaints about companies not providing the promised services -- "several a month," he said.
"Many tourist companies do not give a contract to sign in return for the money paid, where every single event of the tour and all services are specified and their costs stated," Mr Mitrikov said. "And people do not require it."
He said everything, including force majeure circumstances and conditions of the refund of the payments in case of sickness should be in the contract.
He named less than a dozen local tourist companies, which, to his mind, provide proper services and are never complained about.
There are progressive steps, however, for improving the tourism service. Mr Mitrikov said new regulations for licensing international tourist companies, issued December 1995, gave his department the rights to check the activities of the companies.
The new regulations also require that the company has an official office and doesn't work out of someone's apartment, and dictate that at least one of the firm's employees must be a specialist with higher education in tourism or three years experience in the international tourist business.
"Certainly the first companies to check will be those with the complaints," he said.
Tourism in Russia can be a risky undertaking for travelers, as shady companies might promise glamorous trips for low prices and then leave the luckless tourists stuck in customs for hours, or neglect to tell them about visa costs.
One common complaint is the use of notoriously unreliable Aeroflot planes instead of foreign air companies' aircrafts, Mr Mitrikov said.
He said when paying for a tour, people should not only check the licence of a company, but "ask thousands of questions, and receive all the information which is said with a pleasant smile."
If, after all the questions, clients still get ripped off, there is a solution, he said.
"If people were cheated abroad, they should prove to the tourist companies that the services at the hotels were cheaper than what they paid for and the companies must refund them," he said.
"If not, go to the court. With the copy of the courts' decision we will revoke the licenses of such companies."