How will the required stars in Russian hotels affect their cost?
On February 18, the Russian government approved the Regulations on the classification of hotels. It provided for 6 categories - 5*, 4*, 3*, 2*, 1* and without stars, for which a set of services was defined.
Responsibility for “starlessness” for domestic hotels with room stock above 50 will come from 01.07. 2019, for hotels with room stock above 15 – from 01.01.2020.
To ensure a gradual transition period, the Ministry of Economic Development announces a shift in the terms of administrative responsibility until January 1, 2020 and July 1, 2020, respectively.
Experts do not expect anything fundamentally new from the Regulation on classification, and believe that the risks for hotels will be minimal: fines for non-compliance are high, but hotels will cope.
Hotels cannot increase the cost, focusing not so much on the cost of classification, but on the solvency of Russians, and it will not increase in the near future.
G. Mokhov, Chairman of the Legal Commission of the PCT: The practice of mandatory classification of hotels was used earlier in the cities that hosted the Olympics and the World Cup-18, thus, in the eleven largest cities, almost all hotels are classified, “stars” are received and nothing fundamentally new is happening.
The market as a whole is affected by cost, quality, competitiveness. The positive effect is expressed in a systematic approach to determining the category of the hotel, which gives consumers the opportunity to choose the right one and discipline the object.
If hotel services are provided without a certificate of category assignment, hotels will be brought to administrative responsibility.
Hotels will have to officially receive categories. Professionals of the travel market believe that the activities of travel agencies with hotels, the receipt of stars last "will not affect almost in any way."
“Tourist companies rely more on their accommodation evaluation systems when selling any property. This works now and will not change in the near future. The only change, perhaps, with the assignment of stars - with the forced resettlement of tourists - is overbooking in the hotel, technical problems in it and the like, travel agencies will have to comply with the principle of "not lower than the paid category of accommodation", - says A. Kazin, head of the travel agency Ingostur.
According to A. Kazin, it is possible to increase the cost of rooms in hotels, and the hotels wanted to compensate for the costs of obtaining stars and other expenses, but "it is unlikely that this will happen, since the pricing of hotels is based primarily on effective demand, and not on costs." So there is no need to expect much price change.”