By Paul Nicholson
December 10 – Russia’s Federal Agency of Tourism is estimating there will be 30-40% more tourists visiting Russia during the 2018 World Cup, than there were during the Sochi Olympic games. During the whole period of the Sochi games, 2 million people visited the city.
One of the issues facing Russia is accommodating the visitors. The tourism agency said it is developing measures to support regions where hotels and infrastructure are under construction for the World Cup.
Currently only five out of the 11 hosting cities are reckoned to have the infrastructure to receive and accommodate guests – Moscow, St Petersburg, Tatarstan, Krasnodar, and Sverdlovsk.
Nizhniy Novgorod, for example, is variously reported to be lacking between 1,500 and 2,500 hotel rooms – it is reckoned to need 8,000 rooms. To cover the shortfall 11 new hotels are either planned or under construction, while three others are being refurbished.
Local reports are that half of the hotels are under construction while two new hotels in the centre of Nizhny Novgorod are near completion. The other hotels are all in the development and planning stage.
Figures from the Brazilian tourism board Embratur after the World Cup this summer showed the number of international visitors to the country “surpassed all expectations”. Predictions were of 600,000 visitors to the 12 host cities but actually more than a million visited.
In comparison, 310,000 foreign tourists went to South Africa for the World Cup in 2010, while Germany received two million foreign visitors for the 2006 tournament.
The economic effect of these World Cup visitors was reckoned about 30 billion Reals (£7.5 billion). The World Travel & Tourism Council, an industry forum, predicts Brazil will get 6.4 million international tourist arrivals in 2014, and that this number will more than double to 14.2 million by 2024.
Whether Russia benefits in the same way looks likely to depend on the political situation in the world. But the Russians are planning for an influx. In the 2018 FIFA bidding city report by the evaluation committee, Russia was acknowledged for preparing 100,000 hotels rooms, as compared to FIFA’s minimum requirement of 60,000.
93% of rooms in 840 properties had been contracted to the FIFA hotel agreement at that time (the agreement requires 80%).
What will be of particular encouragement to fans will be the focus on the development of three star hotels. Two thirds of the construction was earmarked for this category with a room price ranging from $140 per night in Moscow down to $50 per night in Volgograd.
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