The Russian tourism industry proposed limiting advertising and home sales to aggregators

Since 2019, amendments to the Law on the Fundamentals of Tourism Activities have introduced a gradual mandatory classification of hotels: from January 1, 2022, it is mandatory for all hotels without exception. The requirements of the law did not affect a significant part of the market: guest houses, mini-hotels and other accommodation facilities in the housing stock.

The director of the PCT, Ilya Umansky, affirmed that the rules in the industry should be equal for all market participants and guarantee greater transparency of services for consumers.

According to him, in the first stage, a registry of accommodation establishments will be created so that businessmen can offer their services officially.

He explained that large hotels cannot operate outside the classification and for the tourism industry it is important that other accommodation establishments also pass it and enter the registry.

Laundering of the hotel market is only indirectly related to the classification of objects, said Vadim Melnikov, general director of the MTS Travel service. He considers that it cannot be argued that all guest houses, mini-hotels, etc. non-qualified do not pay taxes and are not recorded on any of the forms.

The expert also warned that a ban on sales to aggregators would drive unclassified members to go underground. Aggregators act as filters, allowing tourists to rate a property, read reviews about it, and also seek help through the support service.

• In 2022, daily rent in St. Petersburg turned out to be more expensive than in Moscow. The average cost of housing in the northern capital was 4 thousand rubles per day. The top ten most popular cities in Russia in the first half of last year included Sochi, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Adler, Kislovodsk, Krasnodar and Yekaterinburg. The Russians stayed there an average of three days and paid a rent of 11.9 thousand rubles on average.