Travel Notes

Beneath New Logo, Real Change? 

Can Sheremetyevo

heal itself?

The new management team at Sheremetyevo airport promised to turn the vast and chaotic facility into a modern airport offering the kinds of amenities international travelers have come to expect. The team will even change the airport’s logo. 

In an interview with the Moscow Times, Sheremetyevo’s first deputy general director in charge of finance, Vladimir Dorokhin, said the key to the team’s success will be a tender to find the right subcontractors for every facet of the airport’s business. Tenders will be organized for everything from providing day-to-day services like parking and taxis to general repairs, construction and even ad placements. “We want to make equal conditions for everyone,” Dorokhin said. “Unfortunately, up until now, contracts have not been awarded on the basis of tenders. We want (this process) to be clear and transparent.”

On June 4, a special tender commission officially began judging proposals for creating a free baggage-cart system. The airport was also to launch a contest to replace Sheremetyevo’s logo—now an airplane approaching a winged landing strip. Another tender was to be held for the reconstruction of Sheremetyevo-2, the airport’s international terminal ($20 million has been set aside for fixing Sheremetyevo-2; the work will begin this fall and finish in six to eight months).

Yet, the biggest tender of all, to be announced soon, is for the company that will operate the much-talked-about Sheremetyevo-3, which hasn’t gotten beyond the ground-breaking ceremony held early last year. The third terminal is desperately needed to accommodate booming passenger flows, but construction has stalled. The previous 2003 deadline for finishing Sheremetyevo-3 has been pushed back to 2005. 

Metro Fare Hike

First change since 2000

Moscow’s metro fare will be raised from the present R5 per ride (or less with multiple ride discounts) to either R6 or R7. The sad news was broken by the head of the Moscow Metro, Dmitry Gaev. “Well, and what are you thinking to yourself?” Gaev said in an interview with Izvestia. “Prices for bread and butter are also changing.” The price of a metro ride in Moscow has not changed since July 2000. At the current ruble-dollar exchange rate, a ride costs about 15 cents. But, when weighted in terms of a monthly income of $500 (Russia’s average per capita monthly income is about $100), 5 rubles is more like 70 cents.

Westward Ho!

The Russians are coming

Two Russian travel agencies—Lanta-Tour Voyage and Irene—are laying the groundwork to offer cheap charter flights to Orlando, Florida, the Moscow Times reported. The US Embassy in Moscow has offered to facilitate visa procedures for tourists, US Consul General James Warlick said. “They are talking about setting up a weekly charter flight that would include the whole package—hotel and so on—at reasonable prices,” he said. Irene travel agency manager Oksana Lyulikina said her agency is targeting families and would like to offer packages organized around Walt Disney World. Yelena Nikitina, who is spearheading the charter bid at Lanta-Tour Voyage, said she was looking at 7-10 day vacation packages for tourists who would find Orlando an attractive alternative to Thailand in the winter months. The packages would start at around $900. 

Cheaper Visas

Russia, US cut

student visa rates

In another move to warm US-Russian relations, the US embassy in Moscow drastically cut prices for Russian student visas from $495 to $65. This reduced the cost of visas for students and participants in exchange programs to a fee covering processing costs. The measure was agreed upon during the May summit meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin and George Bush. The new price took effect on June 1. 

The US embassy issued about 12,000 student visas last year. Meanwhile, the processing fee for Americans seeking Russian tourist visas has risen from $45 to $65, yet the price change only reflects the inclusion of a $20 visa fee that was formerly charged separately. About 120,000 Russians applied for non-immigrant visas to the US last year and three of every four applicants (some 90,000) were granted the visas. A further 12,000 Russians received immigrant visas. 

When 5 Isn’t

Fixing the hotel

rating system

When hotels possess five-star status, but fall short on some of the criteria, they seriously discredit the Russian hotel market and thus impact the city budget, said the National Hotel’s general manager, Yuri Podkopaev. He was speaking at a special press conference devoted to the problem of Russian hotel service standards and certification. Podkopaev joined a working group initiated by the Tourism Department of the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia and reports that there are some 25 different organizations certifying hotels in Moscow today, but in many cases their activity is not impartial. Therefore, the main task of the working group is to establish a unified organization that would not only certify hotels, but would also control compliance with standards. 

And 1’s Too Much 

Fixing some

dilapidated hotels

President of GAO Moskva, Andrei Krivoshein, presented a program for the reconstruction of Moscow’s old multi-building hotels built between 1954-1957. The complexes, such as Ostankino, Zolotoy Kolos, Zarya, Baikal, Tourist, Altai and others, have some 4,267 rooms with a total capacity of 7,500 guests. The majority of the hotels belong to the municipal enterprise GAO Moskva. According to Krivoshein, the hotels badly need urgent capital renovation as they are dilapidated and have “a totally different understanding of the hygienic needs of their customers.” The estimated renovation costs (including full replacement of utilities, construction of elevators and two extra floors on top of the five-story buildings), is estimated at $300 per square meter. 

Painting the Good Life

A museum devoted to the Russian artist Boris Kustodiev opened in his native city of Astrakhan. The house museum features some twenty canvases by Kustodiev and over a hundred sketches for his different works and illustrations. Ilya Repin called Kustodiev the “bogatyr [epic hero] of Russian art.” Kustodiev’s works are among the most colorful of Russian artists, which attracts the attention of contemporary designers and ad makers, especially those advertising Russian-style products. His paintings depict all sorts of typical scenes from Russian life, from maslenitsa, to tea drinking in a traktir, banyas and shopping a la russe. Of special note is his series “Russian characters.” Not surprisingly, then, during the museum’s opening ceremony, participants were dressed up as typical Kustodievan heroes.