Travel Notes

Moscow Hotel Sell-off Set

Four “fixer-uppers” to be put on the market

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n an effort to fill the niche for middle-class hotels, Moscow authorities plan to renovate four Moscow hotels, according to Russia Journal. Moskva Inc., the city’s hotel holding company, has resurrected six-year-old plans to revamp and partially privatize the Rossiya, Moskva, Pekin and Budapest Hotels. 

The city believes it has a workable scheme whereby the hotels (except for the Budapest) will first be converted into joint-stock companies wholly owned by the government. Then, based on market conditions, shares will be sold to private investors, including in some cases controlling stakes. 

Of the four hotels, the Budapest will require the least investment. Currently operating as a three-star hotel, the Budapest will be turned into a higher-end, mid-range hotel and renamed “Peter I” before being sold outright. 

Moscow has announced the impending demolition of the “landmark” Intourist Hotel. A French developer (Superior Venture Limited) apparently has agreed to put up the $130 mn needed to tear down the Intourist and build a new hotel in its place by 2002. The new, five-star hotel will have many fewer floors and about half as many rooms.

ALASKA AIRLINES has said it does not plan to resume flights to the Russian Far East for at least five years. The carrier began regular flights to Khabarovsk in 1991 and steadily expanded its reach in the region. But in November, 1998, after the financial crisis, the airline ceased all flights to Russia.

On the 100th anniversary of the Paris Metro, one of its stations —Les Invalides—was redesigned to copy the decor from the Moscow Metro’s Novoslobod-skaya and Kievskaya stations. “The choice of the station was not accidental,” Jean-Raymond Bour-diole told Sevodnya Daily’s correspondent in Paris. “The Hospitals of the House of Invalides (where France’s war casualties were treated), located right above the station, was once visited by Peter the Great; and a bridge named after Tsar Alexander III is located nearby.” 

Aeroflot and the Russian Railway Ministry are stitching together a new package of travel services called “train-plane.” The program provides for the sale of combined transportation services both for cargo and passenger purposes. 

A monument to Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rakhma-ninov was unveiled on Moscow’s Strastnoy boulevard, not far from Pushkin Square. The ceremony was attended by city leaders and by the composer’s descendants. Patriarch Alexei II gave his blessing to the monument. Nearby the new Rakhmaninov status is one of the bard Vladimir Vysotsky.

A new, high-comfort train began servicing the St. Petersburg-Novgorod route in December. The train features second and third class cars only, yet it boasts a first-class restaurant (pictured) which can accommodate up to 34 passengers. The new train was manufactured in Torzhok (see Russian Life Oct/Nov 1999).