Moscow Pass: priority entrance to museums

The first Moscow Passes will be valid for three days and will cost 60 euros (2400 roubles). These cards will provide priority entrance to museums located in Red Square, such as the State History Museum, the War of 1812 Museum, St. Basil’s Cathedral and some others. The organisers of the project promise that most Moscow museums will join the project by summer. In addition, already in December it will be possible to use double-decked tourist coaches for two days. Double-deckers will be taking tourists from one museum to another and also to piers where tourists will be able to go aboard a river boat and do a sightseeing tour along the Moskva River, the price of which is also included in the price of the Moscow Pass. At present, the project operator is conducting negotiations with the Moscow Metro and banks to make the Moscow pass a tourist travel card and banking card, manager of the WowMoscow tourist projects Ksenia Zemskova said in her exclusive interview with The Voice of Russia.

“We are taking measures to make this card a universal payment instrument, to give tourists an opportunity to pay with it and to get further discounts in addition to sightseeing and using public transport. At present we are trying to determine the best ways of payment for tourists so that they would be happy to use our card. It could be either a credit system or a debit one.”

The Moscow Pass will be supplemented with a city guide-book containing all information that tourists need, such as places of interest, itineraries, announcements of interesting events and even discount coupons for restaurants and hotels.

In turn, the city authorities are modernizing Moscow’s tourist infrastructure. Next year every museum, railway station and airport will be provided with information desks where tourists will be able to receive free information about hotels, public transport and services available in the city. In addition, all street signs in the central part of the city are being replaced with new ones giving information both in the Cyrillic and Roman alphabets, Deputy Chairman of the Moscow City Committee for Tourism and Hotel Industry Georgi Mokhov says.

“We set great store by building an agreeable environment for tourists. This includes Latin-Cyrillic street signs, travel cards and a city call centre for Russian and foreign tourists which has been functioning for a year. I believe that a city pass is an important element for an agreeable tourist environment.”

At present the Moscow Pass is available online but the delivery is only done in Moscow. In the middle of December it will become available in hotels and museum ticket offices. An online payment system will soon be introduced for foreigners. It will be possible to book a card and pay for it on the company’s website in return for a voucher. Upon arrival in Moscow the voucher could be exchanged for a plastic card in any museum. A similar project was launched in St. Petersburg two years ago. Their ‘guest card’ costs 40 euros, is valid for two days and offers tourists a choice of about 40 museums and a dozen tours.