The current situation with hotels in Moscow is catastrophic: speaking plainly, the city lacks hotels of any kind, including economy class and premium ones; besides, the prices in Moscow are considerably higher than, let us say, in America and Europe. Luxury rooms in London and in Moscow are two totally different things. In Russian hotels for 2-3 thousand dollars per day guests will not even be offered supper in their rooms, while abroad for the same money the hotel staff is ready to bring their visitors exclusive champagne for free.

The minimal cost of a room in a Moscow hotel is $50 per day with the assumption that such flophouses cannot be called other than “fleabag”. For comparison, in Berlin it is possible to find a very modest but proper room, and for $10 – to find accommodation in B&B. In Russia – for minimum $15 one can find extreme staying overnight in a hostel in a company of guest workers.

The Moscow government clearly understands this as daily nearly 3 million people come to the Russian capital and encounter the shortage of hotels. The number of tourists is constantly growing. However, the problem is not that easy to solve. Anyway, in the nearest 10-15 years Moscow will remain one of the leading European cities in terms of life cost.

Even if compare the average price for renting a flat Moscow - $800, it appears that only living in the city without services costs $30 per day, which means that a single room in a hotel will hardly go lower in price than this minimum. Even municipal hotels are unlikely to cost less even at a minimal comfort level. Besides, the land in the megapolis steadily goes up in price too, because private investors (Russian and foreign companies) are the main source of real estate development. There is no lack in investors; the number of them is much higher than needed for exploitation of the free land in the capital.

At the moment there are 187 hotels in Moscow. According to the general scheme of hotels arrangement in the city, it is planned to successively increase the hotel funs so that by 2010 there must be 240 hotels for 200 thousand visitors. The expensive Moscow land is the main hindrance for building of 2 and 3-star hotels. This is why, as experts claim, it is impossible to build cheap hotels in the city. As the specialists of the company TRI Hospitality Consulting say, Moscow hotels are the most moneymaking in Europe.

A survey, conducted by the company, has shown that despite the shortage of high-level hotels, the Russian capital takes only the 4th place in the average daily income brought by every hotel room and the 2nd place in the expensiveness of the hotel for its visitors. Besides, it appears the only city where the clear profit of a room before paying the fixed expenses is more than 130 euro. This said to be linked with the difference between the salaries in Russia and Europe. While in Moscow the expenses for the hotel staff salaries are only 20.3% of the whole turnover, in Europe it is 40%.

Source:
    persona.rin.ru

Lavrentyeva Natalya