Russian Railways is going on its competition with air transport. After high-speed trains, it will introduce a new service this summer: charter trains on popular tourist routes. New service will be launched taking into account very high demand on some routes among tour operators and independent travelers as well. First of all, charter trains will transport tourists to Crimea peninsula (Ukraine), one of traditional holiday destinations for beach and active rest since the Soviet times.

First charter trains will take the passengers without any stops to Eupatoria and Feodosia, famous Soviet time sea resorts and Ancient Greek colonies with beautiful sights and amazing history. As soon as charter trains won't make any intermediate stops, travel time will be reduced in a few hours.

Although the word "charter" is associated with rather low service level, without service classes, when we speak about planes, Russian charter trains will have carriages of different class. So, the tourists will be offered tickets different class, from VIP to budget economy class.

Group tickets is one more innovation of charter trains, which will make them very popular among the tour operators. Russian Railways have never sold group tickets, so tour operators had to resort to cunning. In order to provide children, going to a children's campus with place in one car, company's managers had to stay in lines and buy tickets for certain persons into the certain cars. Charter trains provide a possibility to set a few groups of tourists and nobody of them won't find himself among unknown people far away from the group.

Tickets for charter train to Crimea for May (beginning of the season) will cost RU 2, 339 in the economy class, RU 4, 093 in couchette car and RU 7, 966 in lux class.

Reactionn of air carriers followed opening charter train services was flight to Simferopol (capital of Crimea Republic in Ukraine) of low-cost company Avianova: the ticket prices announced begin from $15 (about 424 rubles). Of course this price doesn't contain any charges and actual prices will look more realistic. However, it may be a possibility to save money and especially time: regardless to class, the train goes to Crimea from Moscow for 23 hours. Flight Moscow-Simferopol takes 2 hours. From another hand, Simferopol is situated in the center of peninsula, so the tourists will spend some money and time as well for transfers to the resorts. From another, any transfer to any resort from Simferopol won't take more than a few hours. By the way, air tickets can be bought in advance, while train tickets aren't available earlier than 45 days before the trip/
 

Taking into account prices and comfort levels, we can say that charter trains is a good idea, and maybe it suites not only for Crimea. What about preferring long but comfortable trains transporting you to destination points or planes which don't take so much time, but don't provide any services and land in a few hours of your resort.

Train tickets for Russia can be booked here.

turist.rbc.ru