Another 5 Stars to Rise Over Moscow
The plans of the Moscow-City Business Center developers set forth over 900 hotel rooms. But the name of only one operator, Hyatt International, which would manage 350 rooms in the Federation Tower, had been known so far. Recently, however, it emerged that French Accor Group joined the project to control five-star Sofitel of 150 rooms.
Nowadays, Accor Group launches in Russia the middle-class Novotels and economy Ibises, but it promised in November to come up with luxury Sofitel and Pullman brands. The address of pioneering Sofitel is no secret already. A hotel in Moscow-City transport terminal will operate under this brand, said Vladimir Iliichev, who is the development director in Accor Russia and CIS.
The terminal’s area is roughly 230,000 square meters, of which the hotel will cover 25,000 square meters. The contract for managing five-star hotel (150 rooms) during 15 years was inked with the complex developer Dutch Citer Invest B.V.; Citer Invest GD Jamilya Mirzoeva confirmed the information.
The hotel will be inaugurated by 2010, Iliichev pointed out. In addition to it, Accor will manage apartments in the complex.
The parties didn’t specify the remuneration due to Accor. The amount is usually between 5 percent and 8 percent of hotel’s turnover, said Marina Smirnova, deputy chief of consulting department at Colliers International. But Accor probably lowered the percent for the Moscow-City project, Smirnova supposed, predicting that the annual turnover of the hotel will be roughly $15 million to $20 million in the first three years and step up by 40 percent to 50 percent later on.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 26, 2007
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