ST. PETERSBURG -- Forget the Intourist snoozefest: Sightseeing tours of St. Petersburg are a little different with Yulia Stepanova, as her travel agency takes vacationers around the city on a trademark red London double-decker bus.
It's the result of a joint venture between Stepanova's Golden Pelican travel agency and the London City Sightseeing Co., the first of its kind in the city.
The non-standard approach is nothing new for self-starter Stepanova, who has had to overcome more than her fair share of adversity.
Born 29 years ago to a Russian mother and an African father, Stepanova was left to grow up in a village orphanage in the Leningrad region.
In a place where any non-Russian was treated as an outcast, she challenged the notion of a black orphan girl having no place in ethnic minority-hostile Russia.
"The first 10 years of my life were the worst nightmare, although what followed later was almost like going back into the frying pan," says a relaxed Stepanova sitting at her office desk in downtown St. Petersburg, from where she leads a team of more than 20 employees in arranging tours for about 300 tourists per month worldwide.
"What seems like a fairy tale in Russia makes no news elsewhere," Stepanova says of the rocky path she has trodden to achieve success.
She had to bear the stigma of being abandoned by parents she never knew, and stereotyped reactions of people who condemned her mother's mixed-race relationship.
"Not knowing the implication of names they used to call me, I was brought up to believe that being black was unnatural, and hence inferior," says Stepanova. "The only company I could feel myself welcome in was a group of three to five girls in the orphanage."
Stepanova says she found some relief from racial taunts when she was transferred to an orphanage for older children at the age of 10, as she learned to ignore the name-calling.
But she would smile when called "Rabina Isaura," a positively portrayed 19th-century mixed-race girl featured in a Brazilian soap opera popular in the early 1990s.
Since Stepanova founded Golden Pelican four years ago, using a borrowed computer and space rented with loan money, the travel agency has grown into one of the city's main tour operators.
The linkup with bus tour operator London City Sightseeing Co. has led to St. Petersburg's first simultaneous multilingual sightseeing tours, which run during the main tourist season from May to October.
As well as Russian and English, tours are conducted in Japanese, Finnish, Italian, French and German, Stepanova says. Her ambitious plans now include using three more red London buses and branching out into other cities across the country.
Stepanova says she also has struck deals with low-budget airlines Ryanair and EasyJet to bring tourists from London to St. Petersburg for one-way fares starting as low as 70 euros.
It was her creative temperament, and tough experiences in the job market, that eventually led Stepanova to launch her own business in May 1999, after a six-month course in international tourism management.
"With no one to turn to for advice, it often took me too long to realize I was being taken for granted when looking for a job," Stepanova says. "Male employers tended to look at me as an exotic sex object."
Stepanova attended four schools in seven years starting in 1991, graduating from only one, the St. Petersburg Higher School of Modeling.
After trying fashion designing and working as an art sales consultant, she turned to the media, enrolling on a degree course at the St. Petersburg University of Film and Television in 1997. But finding it hard to earn a living to support her studies, she switched to tourism two years later.
These days Stepanova's problems are different: In a tourism industry only just beginning to shake off the post 9/11 slump, getting past red tape and fighting off competition from cut-price operators are her new bugbears.
Russian tour operators face imprecise licensing laws, she says, which are "too loose to protect operators and their customers."
As an example, she cites the lax requirements for setting up in the tourism business. "It's enough to have $300 in a savings account to open a travel agency," she says. "There are 850 of them now in St. Petersburg, and so many bogus tour operators simply disappear overnight, leaving their customers high and dry. It's a legal discrepancy that leaves Russian tourists and tour operators unprotected in case of travel mishaps abroad, since no one bears responsibility."
It's the result of a joint venture between Stepanova's Golden Pelican travel agency and the London City Sightseeing Co., the first of its kind in the city.
The non-standard approach is nothing new for self-starter Stepanova, who has had to overcome more than her fair share of adversity.
Born 29 years ago to a Russian mother and an African father, Stepanova was left to grow up in a village orphanage in the Leningrad region.
In a place where any non-Russian was treated as an outcast, she challenged the notion of a black orphan girl having no place in ethnic minority-hostile Russia.
"The first 10 years of my life were the worst nightmare, although what followed later was almost like going back into the frying pan," says a relaxed Stepanova sitting at her office desk in downtown St. Petersburg, from where she leads a team of more than 20 employees in arranging tours for about 300 tourists per month worldwide.
"What seems like a fairy tale in Russia makes no news elsewhere," Stepanova says of the rocky path she has trodden to achieve success.
She had to bear the stigma of being abandoned by parents she never knew, and stereotyped reactions of people who condemned her mother's mixed-race relationship.
"Not knowing the implication of names they used to call me, I was brought up to believe that being black was unnatural, and hence inferior," says Stepanova. "The only company I could feel myself welcome in was a group of three to five girls in the orphanage."
Stepanova says she found some relief from racial taunts when she was transferred to an orphanage for older children at the age of 10, as she learned to ignore the name-calling.
But she would smile when called "Rabina Isaura," a positively portrayed 19th-century mixed-race girl featured in a Brazilian soap opera popular in the early 1990s.
Since Stepanova founded Golden Pelican four years ago, using a borrowed computer and space rented with loan money, the travel agency has grown into one of the city's main tour operators.
The linkup with bus tour operator London City Sightseeing Co. has led to St. Petersburg's first simultaneous multilingual sightseeing tours, which run during the main tourist season from May to October.
As well as Russian and English, tours are conducted in Japanese, Finnish, Italian, French and German, Stepanova says. Her ambitious plans now include using three more red London buses and branching out into other cities across the country.
Stepanova says she also has struck deals with low-budget airlines Ryanair and EasyJet to bring tourists from London to St. Petersburg for one-way fares starting as low as 70 euros.
It was her creative temperament, and tough experiences in the job market, that eventually led Stepanova to launch her own business in May 1999, after a six-month course in international tourism management.
"With no one to turn to for advice, it often took me too long to realize I was being taken for granted when looking for a job," Stepanova says. "Male employers tended to look at me as an exotic sex object."
Stepanova attended four schools in seven years starting in 1991, graduating from only one, the St. Petersburg Higher School of Modeling.
After trying fashion designing and working as an art sales consultant, she turned to the media, enrolling on a degree course at the St. Petersburg University of Film and Television in 1997. But finding it hard to earn a living to support her studies, she switched to tourism two years later.
These days Stepanova's problems are different: In a tourism industry only just beginning to shake off the post 9/11 slump, getting past red tape and fighting off competition from cut-price operators are her new bugbears.
Russian tour operators face imprecise licensing laws, she says, which are "too loose to protect operators and their customers."
As an example, she cites the lax requirements for setting up in the tourism business. "It's enough to have $300 in a savings account to open a travel agency," she says. "There are 850 of them now in St. Petersburg, and so many bogus tour operators simply disappear overnight, leaving their customers high and dry. It's a legal discrepancy that leaves Russian tourists and tour operators unprotected in case of travel mishaps abroad, since no one bears responsibility."
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