Price Discrimination: Russians Get a Discount
One common method of price discrimination in Russia is illustrated in the picture above, which shows a sign at Saint Issac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The top sign says "ENTRANCE TO THE MUSEUM" in Russian. If you can read Russian, you enter to the left and go to a ticket counter that has a lower entrance fee than if you follow the English "ENTRANCE" sign to the right, and pay a higher price.
5 Comments:
Sometimes reading is enough. Sometimes you have to speak Russian with a native accent when you get to the ticket window in order to be redirected back to the expensive window. I remember back in the Soviet days, although my Russian wasn't good enough to sound like a native, I got pretty good at faking a Latvian accent that got me thru. Now I suppose the Latvian accent would send me to the euro-priced window.
You are now in Petersburg?
That's deceptive! In Egypt, they put all the prices on the same sign, although the locals' prices are written in Arabic.
But the "Foreigners" label is a bit of a tip-off! Foreigners 16 and locals 1 is they typical ratio. And they will likely nick you another 100 for a video camera.
This is practiced in Thailand as well.
And I think it is very effective way of preserving the culture as well.
This is interesting but you don't have to leave the US to find similar practices. Disney World in Orlando offers discounts to Florida residents...In Kansas City, MO, Jackson County citizens get first shot at Chiefs/Royals tickets (not a big deal now, but the teams were a draw at one time). I had to take my property tax receipt to the ticket window to buy Chiefs playoff seats one year.
Like the KC thing, isn't this less 'gouging' and more 'these people pay to operate these places' with government funding?
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