Simon Cooper, president of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, said at a preview news conference that the Russian market was ready for an upscale hotel like the Ritz, and that quite a few reservations had already been taken for the hotel, which is on Tverskaya Street, a few steps from the Kremlin.
Stanislav Ivashkevich, deputy head of the hospitality industry development unit at the CB Richard Ellis Noble Gibbons consulting firm, said the Moscow Ritz will face no competition at the upper end of the Russian hotel market in the foreseeable future, except for the nearby Moskva Hotel, currently under major reconstruction.
The Ritz was built to replace the rundown Soviet-era Intourist hotel, demolished in 2002. Constructed using architectural elements of the Art Nouveau style and Classicism, the new edifice occupies a total area of about 60,000 square meters, and has 334 rooms, including 66 spacious suites, one of them presidential. The hotel has three restaurants, a banquet hall, and a glass-domed bar overlooking the Kremlin. The price of a standard room is around $1,000 per night, with the presidential suite costing at least double.
