I bought your 2024 Guidebook and it seems great. Thank you!
I was planning to stay in Moscow for 5 months. Zenhotels.com seems wonderful. However it only seems to allow 30 day reservations. What is the best way to reserve an apartment for 5 months if I don’t yet have a Tinkoff card or Russian phone number?
Perhaps I could book a 30 day stay using Zenhotels and my US credit card. Once I arrive in Russia, I could obtain a Tinkoff account and then make a 4 month apartment reservation using sutochno.com. That is not ideal since there might be limited apartment options when booking only 30 days in advance. But that may still be the best option.
@bbhirsch Thank you very much Brian.
You can use your US credit card for booking an apartment with Zenhotels. You can also contact support in Zenhotels and ask if they can request to the hotel/apartment and get back to you with their response via email.
With sutochno.com payment is only possible with Russian bank cards. You can send a link to make a prepayment to a friend. To do this, click “Make an advance payment - Another person will pay”. You can rent an apartment for 4 months.
For sutochno.com, there doesn’t seem to be an option for a friend to pay. See the below screenshots. I emailed sutochno.com and asked whether a friend can make the prepayment on my behalf. I’m still waiting for their response.
For Zenhotels, do you mean that I might be able to book an apartment for longer than 30 days if I contact the apartment directly? I have already contacted Zenhotels about this. However I’m still waiting for their response.
@bbhirsch Once you have chosen an apartment at Zenhotels, contact support so that they can contact the owner of the apartment to find out if it is possible to rent it for more than 30 days. They usually respond within 24 hours.
I contacted ZenHotels over the chat screen in their app. They said I couldn’t make a 60 day reservation. But I could make two back-to-back 30 day reservations (60 days total). I’m going to try calling them again because I’m not sure I’m speaking to the right person.
