The tour time was 12:00, and I waited for the guide from 11:45, but the guide did not show up. There was no internet, so I had no way to contact them, but I got a call around 12:05 and was told that I couldn't go on the tour. I think that if they are going to unilaterally cancel a reservation, they should notify us at least an hour or two in advance. Because the guide contacted me after the scheduled reservation time, I had to change my plans for the day and wasted time. They even forced me to tip 5,000 rubles if I was going to make a reservation for the next time since I was the only one attending. I thought it was a very rude and unprofessional response.
Response from RusiaTourMoscu
We are sorry for your bad experience. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any reservations for today and we didn’t expect to have a tour, as the tourism is currently very low in Russia because of the current situation. Your reservation showed up at 1:36 am. So, unfortunately, we just didn’t notice it advance in order to be able to warn you on time that the tour was not going to happen at 12 pm. We were willing to reschedule it, however, we mentioned that it would be fair to expect a decent tip (around 5000 rub) for a 3-hour private tour. As I mentioned previously, there are almost no tourists these days, and as far as you may know, these kind of tours are based on tips. So if there is a big group, the tip is sufficient. But if there is 1 o 2 people, we are forced to let tourists know before the tour happens, that we hope to be rewarded properly for a private 3-hour tour.
