What a VIVANT filming-location trip to Azerbaijan costs

Birtour is a destination management company based in Baku. This page is about money: what a six-day Azerbaijan trip built around the VIVANT filming locations costs to buy, starting from the one price that is actually public, which is Hankyu Travel's packaged departure.

Settle one thing before reading further. As of July 2026 we have not published our own land-only price for this trip. The section where that number belongs is on this page, marked as missing, with what we will quote on and what to send us. A hole is better than an estimate, and on a page about price an estimate is the most damaging thing we could print.

What does the packaged six-day tour cost?

Hankyu Travel put course ET391T,「魅惑のアゼルバイジャン6日間」, on sale on 25 July 2026 at ¥279,000 to ¥379,000 per person on a twin-share basis. Six days. Eleven departures and no more: 30 November 2026, then January, February, April, May, two in June, July, August and two in October 2027. The flights leave Haneda on Turkish Airlines in economy and connect through Istanbul, because no airline flies Japan to Baku directly.

The published itinerary covers Icherisheher, the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, the Baku Metro, Sheki old town, the Sheki Caravanserai, the Juma Mosque of Shamakhi and the Candy Cane Mountains. Six of those carry a numbered ロケ地 heading on Hankyu's page, marking them as filming locations: the Old City of Baku, the historic centre of Sheki, the Juma Mosque of Shamakhi, the Baku Metro, the Candy Cane Mountains and the Palace of the Shirvanshahs. Those are Hankyu's own labels. The page states a tie-up with the drama, cites no licensor for the designations, and describes each of the six only as a sight rather than saying what was shot there. From the April 2027 departures onward the group stays overnight in a caravanserai in Sheki rather than walking through one during the day.

Everything in the two paragraphs above comes from Hankyu Travel's course page for ET391T and we have added nothing to it. We are not going to tell you whether that tour is good. We have never travelled on it, we compete with the option of buying it, and an opinion from us on that question would be worth nothing to you.

What do the flights cost?

This is our own lookup, not a breakdown of anyone else's costs. Hankyu has not published how its price divides between air and land, and we have no access to that.

On 26 July 2026, Turkish Airlines' own Japan site listed Tokyo to Baku round trip in economy from ¥232,890 across its dated December 2026 and January 2027 itineraries, and gave a month-level "from" figure of ¥242,680 for December 2026. Both figures are from turkishairlines.com, checked 26 July 2026.

Five qualifications, all of which matter more than the number:

1. That is a lowest-available fare, not what you should budget. On the same day, Google Flights put Turkish Airlines' typical Tokyo to Baku round trip at US$1,300 to US$2,200, with its own cheapest Turkish round trip over the following three months at US$1,687. We have quoted those in dollars because Google quotes them in dollars, and we are not applying an exchange rate to make the two sets of figures look comparable.
2. Turkish Airlines' dated fares are tagged Tokyo (Narita) on its own site, while the package flies from Haneda. Treat ¥232,890 as a Tokyo-area indication rather than a Haneda price.
3. Turkish Airlines' Japanese-language page notes that the displayed fare may be Basic Economy, its most restricted fare type. Checked baggage may not be included in it.
4. Turkish Airlines is not the cheapest way to reach Baku from Tokyo. KAYAK Japan's Haneda to Baku page on 26 July 2026 showed an average round trip of ¥180,879 and a cheapest of ¥182,468 on Qatar Airways, which is a different routing from the one the package uses.
5. No source we could read published Turkish Airlines fares beyond January 2027, so we are not quoting a figure for the February to October 2027 departures. Of the eleven departures the check above directly covers one, the January 2027 departure, because a round trip is priced on the date it leaves. The December 2026 window opens a day after the 30 November departure, which makes it a reasonable proxy for that one and nothing more. The other nine are not covered by anything on this page.

Fares move within days. Anything on this page that comes from a fare check carries the date we checked it, and 26 July 2026 is that date.

Why we are not subtracting the flight from the package price

You can see the subtraction that is available here, and we are not doing it.

Taking a lowest-available single-traveller fare out of a price range produces a number that looks like Hankyu's land cost and is not one. Hankyu has published a price and an itinerary; it has not published a split. Any figure we printed would be ours wearing their name. It would also be wrong in a specific and predictable direction, because package airfares are contracted in blocks well ahead of departure and rarely match the fare a single passenger can buy on a given afternoon.

The same rule applies in the other direction, which is why there is no Birtour column further down. We are not deriving our own land price from a competitor's retail price either.

What does the package give you that a direct booking does not?

Three things, and all three are real.

The first is the night inside a caravanserai in Sheki on the April 2027 departures onward. Both surviving caravanserais on Akhundzade Avenue are protected buildings, only a small fraction of the old merchants' chambers have been converted into guest rooms, and a group booking into a room count that small is not something an individual traveller should assume they can replicate on their own dates. The building itself is covered on our Sheki Caravanserai page.

The second is a guaranteed departure. Eleven dates are already costed and already have seats and ground arrangements held against them. You are choosing from a list rather than assembling anything.

The third is that you buy it once, in Japan, in Japanese, with the flights and the ground programme on the same booking.

If those three outweigh choosing your own dates, buy the package. We would rather write that sentence than pretend the comparison only runs one way.

What changes when you arrange the ground side directly?

The dates stop being a list of eleven. That is the whole of the difference for anyone who wants to travel before late November 2026, or in March or September 2027, or on a Tuesday that suits them.

The shape of the itinerary becomes yours, within one fixed constraint. Sheki is about 300 km northwest of Baku and the drive runs four to four and a half hours through Shamakhi and Gabala, so a Sheki overnight is a feature of any honest version of this route rather than a decision you get to make. What you can move is how many nights sit at each end of it.

Hotel category becomes a line you set rather than a level someone else picked. So does vehicle class, and whether the vehicle is yours or shared.

Guiding becomes a per-day line by language. Japanese-language guiding is arranged booking by booking rather than held as standing capacity, and the reasons and the limits are set out in full on our Japanese-speaking guides page.

Flights come off the same invoice, which means you can change airline, routing or date without touching the ground arrangement.

And the costs arrive as components rather than as one blended figure. That is the format the whole of our net rates and B2B pricing guide is built on, and for an agency it is the difference between being able to price a trip and having to accept one.

What Birtour will quote, and what is not on this page yet

Here is the column this page does not have.

The missing figure is the land-only net cost of a six-day Baku and Sheki arrangement for two people sharing, covering the guide, the transport, the hotels and the entrance fees, plus the supplement for a day with a Japanese-speaking guide. It is not published as of July 2026, and nothing on this page is a substitute for it.

When it does land here, it will carry the month it was priced in, written as as of 2026-07 or whichever month applies. Ground costs in Azerbaijan move with the season and with the exchange rate, and a rate printed with no date on it is a rate you have no way to check. That convention is set now so the first real number inherits it rather than arriving loose.

To get a figure for your own trip, send five things: the dates or at least the month, how many of you there are, the hotel category you want, whether you need a Japanese-speaking guide on every day or only on some, and whether the Sheki night should be in a caravanserai or a conventional hotel. Agencies and operators can start from our Azerbaijan DMC page; the shape of a useful enquiry is on our guide to requesting a quote.

What this page will not do

We will not rate Hankyu's tour. We compare structure and published price, and we stop there.

We will not publish a Birtour price we have not been given, and we will not build one out of a competitor's retail figure, an airfare, or a subtraction between the two.

We will not convert currencies to make our sources agree with each other. Where a source quotes dollars, this page quotes dollars.

We do not hold official status of any kind in connection with the drama or the packaged departures, and nothing here should be read as though we do.

Disclosure

Birtour is not affiliated with TBS, with the VIVANT production committee, or with the travel companies selling packaged VIVANT departures. We are a destination management company based in Baku. This page compares published prices and the structure of two ways of buying the same trip.

For a traveller or an agency working out which of the two fits, the filming locations themselves and the distances between them are set out on our VIVANT in Azerbaijan page.