Can anyone tell me what is the best way to get from St Petersburg to see Estonia and Latvia without breaking the bank?

We have seen a HUGE difference everywhere and hear about it from all the natives. We travel very slowly and have used every kind of transportation from freighter ships to camels over 75,000 miles, but most of it is overland and into nooks in the country as well as the major sites.

We see things get worse every year ( which we actually expected and a big reason why we sold our home in 2005 in Ca at peak). We have spent the last 3 winters in a tiny 15th century while village near the sea in Andalusia and each year it has gotten much worse here. There are TONS of rental and sale signs all over the sugar cube houses and many friends have closed their restaurants and moved away.

All of Europe is a bargain now as are the flights. I doubt that the dollar will stay up too long ( fundamentals just don’t call for it with a bankrupt country) nor will gas prices. Tourism every where will be affected this year, but all the better reason to travel and take advantage of the bargains.

There are always booms and busts. Yes, it is nicer for the sellers of things to get the higher prices of boom times, but I find they are grateful to get what they can in bust times. It is just the way of the world, I would not feel bad about it.

Smart people are frugal even in boom times, so that when the bust comes they can take advantage. Smart travelers should be taking advantage now and everyone should be grateful to have them!

Nicky and Alex, regarding the market pricing issue:

I, like Alex, have often been frustrated with hotel market pricing, especially in big cities like London and New York. When reviewing hotels in these cities, receptionists often look baffled when I ask for the minimum and maximum hotel rates (a seemingly straight-forward question!). After all, these hotels usually have an employee solely responsible for adjusting the room rates on a daily basis. This means that the hotel is doing searches online, checking out the competitors’ rates for various dates, and pricing their own rooms accordingly (and, obviously, taking into account their own inventory). This results in a wild range of rates.

Most hotels in Riga gave me their “low season” rate, but then quickly told me that, if I booked a room at that moment, the rate would be much cheaper. The city, after all, was empty. (At one hotel, the manager told me that she has to give walk-in tourists the standard “rack rate.” If they scoff at the price, she then directs them to the hotel’s internet station, where they could book the same room online for a fraction of the price. This especially struck me as odd, as the hotel would have to pay a commission if booked online.)

So, I think I was observing three things:

1) Riga is seeing its hotel “market pricing” mechanism in freefall, due to a slow season and a surplus of rooms. (This is obviously good for the tourists who ARE there.)

2) Latvia is experiencing a financial crisis (bank collapse, government collapse, massive debt, no more loans, etc.). This crisis fuels uncertainty. (Can hotels get needed loans? Will the city have the money to finish projects? Will museums and performance halls be able to stay open?)

3) The local tourism trade seems to have the jitters about whether or not tourists will return for the high season. Will the crisis keep visitors away? (Also, of course, whether other nation’s financial problems will keep them from visiting Latvia.) If so, their money won’t be shared with restaurants, cafes, stores, theaters, tour buses, etc. And, of course, if they don’t come, the “market prices” of the hotels will remain low, hurting the hotels.

I agree–at difficult times, we should go. As Jacky points out, visiting during difficult time can, in fact, be the responsible thing to do. But do it in ways that keeps the money THERE.

Tom

I am not at all sure that Americans are the prime culprits here. Germans go sometimes to gated compounds in the Dominican Republic, often to all-inclusive resorts where all the profit is repatriated to Germany. These visitors’ engagement with the communities they visit is zilch (and indeed often discouraged by the resort managers).

But as you rightly say, Alex, budget travellers often choose locally owned accommodation, eat at local cafes, and behave in a manner that somehow fits in more with the local community. So be it Riga or Reykjavik in 2009, go for it, but espouse slow travel principles and always try and give something back to the communities you visit.

Nicky

I will add something, though. I think it’s important to remember is that a pricing differential does not mean that the richer tourist is necessarily and automatically behaving in an exploitative manner. A price differential is a fact—and by no means a stable one—and it can be exploited mercilessly or accommodated to the benefit of all parties. For Americans accustomed to traveling through Western Europe, the idea that we might somehow exploit the locals along our journeys seems ludicrous. Pricing tends to be higher in big Western European cities than it is in big American cities—in many cases nearly extortionately so. But Western Europe is but a piece of Europe, and there are plenty of places like Riga where meals, cultural activities, and budget hotels are all going to be pretty cheap. In these places, I think that it’s important to remind ourselves that the lats we withdraw from the bank machine are economically useful, and not exploitative weapons. (How we spend our money, of course, is another matter. But you get my drift.)

This leads me to another point. Budget travelers are often better and more respectful than your average travelers. Budget travelers don’t tend to be entitled and snippy about things like the state of their hotel rooms or a particular, culturally-specific concept of “service.” They’re often willing to try local foods and traditions and are typically uninterested in cookie-cutter business hotels and bland “international” cuisine. If budget travelers know that a place like Riga is more affordable than it was, say, a year ago, then there’s a greater chance that they’ll flock there. And this, in my view, is a good thing all around.