Recently, I have accumulated quite a lot of interesting ideas on how to save money while traveling in Russia. I learned how to get into airport business lounges for free and book a hotel room cheaper than on the official website; how to track promotions for flights, and then also buy them with a good cashback. I hope my advice will be of interest to you too. Let’s get started. I’ll give you 10 ideas, and you’ll get a subscription, a like, and a nice comment.
Tip No. 1. Don’t miss airline sales
To do this, I use three channels in the telegram. Это:
- t.me/piratesru
- t.me/travelradar
- t.me/samokatus
(There are probably other similar ones, but personally I like these ones the most). Every day they publish news about airline sales and promotions. How to fly to Istanbul from Moscow for 7000 rub? And how to buy tickets from St. Petersburg to Minsk for 2500 rub. If you like traveling, be sure to subscribe to them. They will help you not to miss all the fun.
Tip No. 2. Use promo codes
They are great for saving money on hotels. For example, Yandex Travel now has a promo code KHL20, which allows you to “cut” 20% of the room rate in a couple of clicks. It works until 30.03.2025. And only for hotels from this special selection. But the choice there is excellent – in the arsenal there are all the cities where KHL matches are held (from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Vladivostok and Kazan). So don’t ignore this possibility.
Recently, this is how I booked this nice hotel near the center of Moscow. The price turned out to be 5700 rub for two nights. I think it’s a great deal.
Tip #3. Replace hotels with apartments
Lately I prefer hotels. But apartments, of course, also have many advantages. There is a kitchen there, which allows you to save on food perfectly. And they are usually larger in area and cheaper in price. Therefore, it is also worth considering this option.
I usually look for apartments myself on this site. This is a Russian equivalent of AIRBNB with a good selection of apartments, houses and other housing “from the owners”. If you have never used this site before, register an account here at this link. This way you will immediately receive a small bonus (500 rub) for the first booking.
Tip No. 4. Use the loyalty programs of Russian airlines
I ignored them for a long time, sincerely believing that I would never accumulate enough miles for a free ticket to Cape Town anyway. But it turned out that the list of buns is not limited to just that. Somewhere you can get a seat on an airplane with plenty of legroom (S7) for free. About a 20 percent discount in honor of the birthday (Utair). And somewhere the right to priority registration, free transportation of winter equipment or a discount on bulky luggage (Nordwind, Aeroflot).
How it works is perfectly described here in this article. There, the author collected all the advantages of the bonus programs of the six largest Russian airlines. I don’t see any point in reprinting this material here, so I’ll just share the link.
Tip number 5. Study airport plans
They often have a free children’s room (with kitchen), a space for coworking or some other buns. Just scroll through the airport plan before your trip. Maybe there’s something interesting there.
Children’s room in Domodedovo.
Tip No. 6. Make your way to the airport business lounge
There is free food, coffee, cakes, and sometimes alcohol included. In some business halls, you can even sleep, take a shower or send your child to the nursery. I think it’s not worth explaining that traveling in Russia will be much more pleasant if you wait for them in such an atmosphere.At the same time, you can get all this quite simply.
All you need is to become a premium customer of the Russian T-bank. To do this, just register here at this link. This way you will receive a month of Bonus as a gift (and then you can simply turn it off). The subscription includes free travel insurance for Russia, free mobile communication and 2 free passes to the business lounges of Russian airports.
Everything is fine, but for this, of course, you need to be a customer of T-bank. If you do not have his card, then you can apply for it here (all new customers are now given 500 rub as a welcome bonus).
Tip No. 7. Buy S7 tickets with cashback
Concluding the topic of T-bank, I will write a couple more lines about its bonuses. It was like this. In April 2024, we bought tickets from Moscow to Antalya. And I noticed that S7 tickets in the bank’s mobile app cost the same as on the carrier’s official website. At the same time, 3% cashback is credited for the purchase. In our case (for 3 tickets there and 3 tickets back), the savings amounted to 2,100 rub. I agree, a little bit. But it’s also nice.
Tip No. 8. Equip your phone with the necessary applications
There are about a dozen of them in my smartphone. And each of them helps me a lot when traveling in Russia.
- Maps.me – these are convenient offline maps that allow you not to get lost even without a stable Internet;
- Where to Eat is a free restaurant guide that helps you choose good establishments in different cities of the Russian Federation;
- Wi-Fi Map finds points (and merged passwords) from the Internet when necessary.
- And Packpoint helps to pack a suitcase, forms lists of things for the road and gives tips depending on the duration of the trip, its goals and even the expected weather.
In a separate line, I want to write about two more applications that you probably know about without me. This is Kinopoisk and Bookmate (aka Yandex Books). The first one allows you to download movies on the road and watch them without the Internet. The second one does the same thing, but with respect to books. One and the other always stays on my phone and perfectly helps me pass the time on the road.
Tip No.8.5. Free audio guides in different cities
Another useful travel app is called IZI travel and is a collection of free audio guides for different cities. To be honest, a good half of the excursions here are outright crooks. But the other half is quite worthy of attention.
There are museum tours, thematic routes, historical audio performances and quite rare finds (about non-tourist locations and very small towns). A good option is how to save on the services of a guide while traveling in Russia.
Tip No. 9. Take a look at the section with Russian Railways shares
Right now, you can read there about discounts on tickets to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, about promotions for students and family companies, as well as about other promotional offers of the carrier. You can find all this on the pagerzd.ru/ru/9331 . See if any of this is relevant to you.
Tip number 10. Give author tours a chance
This advice works great in the context of thematic tours – for example, if you have long dreamed of seeing whales in the Arctic Ocean or riding in a mini-group along the shamanic trails of Lake Baikal. It is also well suited for those who are not yet ready to travel on their own and would like to have a professional guide nearby. You can find such offers on this site. There are pagan trails of Karelia, and “Altai Mars”, and ghost villages of Dagestan.
Look through their catalog – and I’ll say goodbye with these words. I hope my article was useful to you, and now your travels in Russia will become more interesting and more budget-friendly. If yes, please like, subscribe to the channel and drop some nice comment at the bottom.
