On the spot where the hulking beast of the Hotel Intourist used to stand, just off Red Square at the mouth of Moscow's Tverskaya thoroughfare, there's now a spanking new Ritz Carlton, opened last month.
The former offered shabby rooms for £50 a night, dodgy prostitutes in the lobby and stale salads on the menu. Its replacement swaps threadbare carpets and dingy corridors for overdone gilt and marble interiors, and the cheapest of its 334 rooms goes for £550 per night.
A champagne breakfast costs £350, which the hotel’s own press release cheerfully proclaims to be "one of the world's most expensive morning meals". The rooftop terrace offers £50 cocktails or shots of pure oxygen for £30.
The story is the same elsewhere around town, with older Soviet hotels making way for new luxury,
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
The new hotels in
Moscow cost a fortune - and they’re proud of it, says shaun walker |
| |
catering for business travellers and moneyed Russians. The brutalist Hotel Rossiya, on the other side of Red Square and the largest hotel in the world when it opened in 1967, was torn down last year and will be replaced by a luxury development to include several hotels, designed by Lord Foster's hyperactive architects. No one will miss the tired rooms and dire service, but many might mourn the fantastic views of St Basil's Cathedral and Red Square from the cheap rooms.
Hotel prices are one of the reasons that Moscow – where the average monthly salary is less than £400 – consistently tops surveys of the world's most expensive cities. The Ritz Carlton's presidential suite, which comes with a bullet-proof dining room, costs £8,000 per night, meaning that the average Muscovite would have to work for nearly two years to afford a one-night stay. 
FIRST POSTED AUGUST 6, 2007 |
