Regions Checking Out of Soviet-Era Hotels
The days of Russian hotels that featured surprise cold showers, burned-out light bulbs and mysterious-smelling blankets are slowly passing into the realm of funny memories.
“Right at the end of the Soviet Union, everything was still Soviet standard. There was only one model bed that was approved for use in hotels for foreigners. If you’re 6-foot-2 like I am, you’re missing about 4 inches of bed,” said Paul Goncharoff, an American businessman who has been working in Russia since 1976. “Unless I unscrewed the baseboard of the bed, I could never stretch out.”
Today, business travelers no longer have to carry around screwdrivers, ready to take apart bed frames, as the unpredictable Soviet-era hotels of Russia’s regions steadily lose market share to standardized chain hotels like Radisson SAS, Hilton and Park Inn.
Following the pattern, with some significant differences, Wyndham Hotel Group International will open its first Ramada hotel in Yekaterinburg in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Currently, “there are not a lot of branded hotels in Yekaterinburg,” said Christian Michel, the regional vice president of development for Wyndham. “We want to position this as a business hotel just outside the city.”
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Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 11:44 pm under