How do I get the invitation to Russia if I’m making hotel reservations with Booking.com?

If you are travelling to Russia and you are making your hotel reservations with Booking.com or similar platforms, you can get your invitation to Russia quickly and economically through various registered Russian tourist tour operators. In this post I’ll explain how to do it step by step and in 5 minutes.

Introduction

Most tourists who travel to Russia, book their hotel or apartment through one of the main booking centers such as Booking.com, Hotels.com, Agoda, Priceline, HotelsCombined, Trivago, Expedia, TripAdvisor, MakeMyTrip, ZenHotels, Ostrovok, Airbnb, etc.

These reservation platforms can’t issue invitation letters to Russia, since they are companies that act as intermediaries between the hotels and the final customer.

Then I’ll explain how you can get your invitation to Russia in 5 minutes, if you have made reservations or you are going to book your accommodation with any of these accommodation reservation platforms.

For this, I have used several of these three Russian tour operators on different occasions: iVisa, Russia Support and HotelsPro. The price of the invitation is around USD 16-20.

Step 1. Make your reservation with Booking.com

The first step will be to make your hotel or apartment reservation with Booking.com, or using similar platforms such as Hotels.com, Agoda, etc.

Once you have made and confirmed the reservation, you will only need a piece of information to request your invitation to Russia: the name and address of your hotel or apartment. In Booking it is very easy to copy and paste the address of your hotel, just select the address and click with the right mouse button to copy it:

In this example above, this is the data needed to fill out the invitation request form:

• President Hotel – Bolshaya Yakimanka Street 24, Yakimanka, 119134 Moscow
• Hotel Eliseevskiy – Ulitsa Naberezhnaya reki Fontanki 64, 9N, 191002 Saint Petersburg

Important note: if you haven’t decided yet which hotels you are going to book, you can also request the invitation letter without having booked your hotels. In this case you can include random hotels.

Step 2. Fill out the invitation letter request form

You can request the invitation letter through one of these three Russian tour operators:

• iVisa
• Russia Support
• HotelsPro

When filling out the invitation letter request form, in the “Hotel” field you must indicate the name of the hotel or apartment and its address:

Step 3. Download the invitation

After filling out and making the payment of the invitation letter, you can download the invitation letter in which the apartments you have booked and your address will be indicated there. It is enough to print this invitation and submit it with the rest of the documentation for the visa proceeding. You can see an example of an invitation letter from iVisa below:

In the example of invitation letter (also called visa support letter or tourist confirmation document) I indicate the 4 data you will need to put, in order to fill out the visa application form:

• Name of organization: Visa Centre, LLC
• Address: Leninsky Avenue 153 А office 706 St Petersburg 196247
• Reference number: 015681
• Confirmation number: 106233

Step 4. Fill out the application form

There are two types of application forms: a longer one for UK, USA, Canadian, Australian and Georgian nationals, and a shorter one for the rest of the countries.

The application form for UK, USA, Canadian, Australian and Georgian nationals, which is filled out through this link, would be as follows in the accommodation section (include your hotel or Booking.com apartment instead of Airbnb apartment):

The application form for the rest of nationalities (Indian, European, Chinese, Japanese, etc), which is filled out through this link, would be as follows in the accommodation section:

As you can see, in this application form it is not necessary to indicate the name of the accommodation, only the information of the authorized agency that invites you (in the example, Visa Service LLC) and the cities that you will visit.

Conclusion

As you can see, getting an invitation to Russia with an authorized Russian tour operator is very easy, fast and economic. In addition, it has great advantages:

• Even if you are staying in several hotels, a single invitation is enough, as long as it indicates the details of all your hotels in Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc.
• If you need to modify the hotels of the invitation before applying for the visa, you can do it quickly and without problems.
• In addition, nothing happens if after obtaining the visa you decide to cancel your hotels and stay in other more economic hotels, or accommodations that you may like more.
• Within the period of your stay you can include the train night routes you make (for example, if you travel by night train from Moscow to St. Petersburg or vice versa).

You can find a more detailed explanation on how to apply for a visa to Russia is in this article: How to obtain the visa to Russia more easily and economically

If you have booked accommodations with Booking.com for your trip to Russia, I hope that this article has been useful for you to get your invitation letter quickly and economically. Tell us your experience below in the comments section.