The general Bohr Hamiltonian is applied to a description of low-lying collective excitations in even-even isotopes of Te, Xe, Ba, Ce, Nd and Sm. The collective potential and inertial functions are determined by means of the Strutinsky method and the cranking model, respectively. A shell-dependent parametrization of the Nilsson potential is used. An approximate particle-number projection is performed in the treatment of pairing correlations. The effect of coupling with the pairing vibrations is taken into account approximately when determining the inertial functions. The calculation does not contain any free parameter.