Irina, a young consultant in a Western company, loves boasting to colleagues about her trip to Argentina and showing off her tan and holiday snaps. The only thing is: she's never been there.
Doesn't matter, according to the man behind this novel idea for arousing envy -- fake trips with real side effects.
Meet Dmitry Popov, president of Perseus-Tour and a pioneer of what he calls "virtual vacations."
"Our turnover has gone up by 50 percent since we started organizing these fake voyages in May 2005 for some 30 clients a month," said Popov.
Irina was one of those seduced by the option of spending US$400 for a prestigious, though fictitious, trip to destinations such as Brazil, Argentina or India that in reality would cost them some US$3,000 dollars -- either to impress colleagues, seek attention, or even push for a promotion.
In Irina's case, it was to impress the boss.
"It's difficult to get ahead just by working. In our company, every-one slaves away like crazy," said Irina, 23, who dreams of becoming a manager and asked not to be identified.
"My boss is passionate about extreme vacations. He goes to South America, even to Iraq. To impress him, I decided to go all alone to Argentina, a trip that in real life I could certainly not afford," she added.
Last November she had her picture taken at Perseus-Tour so that its computer wizards could get to work on cutting and pasting her image onto the background of tourist sites.
She then underwent a course on Argentine subtleties and learned by heart the addresses of restaurants and the best nightclubs, not to mention small details on "her" four-star hotel in Buenos Aires.
"In a week, I learned more about it than had I gone there for real. I announced my departure and went happily to see my parents in the Moscow region, not forgetting to visit tanning salons," she said.
Fifteen days later, a resplendent Irina arrived on her company's doorstep with a tale of exotic lands complete with every detail.
"Apparently I told my colleagues everything they wanted to know -- how to learn to tango, how to behave with Argentines, the real machos that they are but courteous in a sense," the blue-eyed blonde recalled.
"For a moment, I nearly believed it all myself."
Since then, her boss has "involved her in the more interesting projects" and if a manager's post is free within a year, "it will be me that he will propose it to," she said with conviction.
A third of Perseus-Tour's clients go through this elaborate fraud to boost their "social status," Popov said.
"A 28-year-old Muscovite, working with a Western company, even wounded her arm for better make-believe of a piranha hunt in the Amazon. All this to show her colleagues that her way of life was superior to theirs," the travel agent said.
The other two-thirds of the clients, however, take this unorthodox path to later provide an alibi to a spouse.
Among these, 80 percent are men covering up a last jaunt before marriage, the travel agent said.
Andrei, a 27-year-old lawyer in Saint Petersburg, told his fiancee that he was leaving for a "seminar in Egypt" in order to spend five days in the company of "an old acquaintance whom I absolutely had to see again".
"I brought my fiancee some Egyptian jewelry, photos showing me in a business suit and in a conference room, or on a beach, and told her lots of stuff about Egypt, where I have never been. She never suspected anything," he said.
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