50% OF MOSCOW HOTELS MIGHT BE CLOSED DOWN IN 2021.

The next forecast for the development of the hotel business in the capital was announced by Dmitry Shlopak, a representative of the Moscow branch of Business Russia. He said that about half of Moscow's hotels could be completely closed in the next six months. According to the chairman of the hotel business committee, this is a negative scenario for the development of events, caused by the pandemic and its socio-economic consequences.

Earlier, the expert expressed concern that most of the Russian hotels will not receive a significant part of their previous income. By the end of the current year, it might be an amount of 300 billion rubles.

Large urban agglomerations, which previously actively attracted tourist flows, will miss 85% of their revenues this year compared to 2019.

According to the expert, small hotels and hostels were the first in the hotel business to bear the blow of restrictions, imposed by the state. Now, according to Shlopak, about 20% of the hotels are put up for sale in Moscow, as their owners made a decision to liquidate the business. By the middle of next year, their number may reach 50%. Hoteliers in other large Russian cities are experiencing similar difficulties: St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod.

Shlopak also drew attention to the difficulties associated with obtaining subsidies from the state. According to him, about 80% of the owners are faced with document flow problems and obstacles in the field of information interaction between individual departments.

In early summer, after the first lockdown had been canceled by the Moscow authorities, the expert assumed the possibility of restoring the industry by October 2020.

The likelihood was assumed if the "second wave" of the pandemic did not follow and new bans, similar to those that the authorities established in the spring, could be avoided. Now the expert claims that the hotel business in Moscow will be able to fully recover no earlier than in 2024, and the process itself will begin no earlier than in mid-2021.