“Tourism.RF” is implementing a hotel project worth about 9 billion rubles. in the Baltic

The state corporation “Tourism.RF”, which has already announced the construction of the White Dune resort in the Kaliningrad region, decided to support new projects in the region and co-founded a company that can implement a hotel project on the Baltic Sea coast worth about 9 billion rubles. Tourist interest in the region has grown more than one and a half times over the past year, and there is a shortage of hotels on the coast. But, according to experts, it is still more profitable to build hotels in Kaliningrad itself.

The State Corporation “Tourism.RF” became a co-founder of LLC “Water World” in Kaliningrad, discovered by “Kommersant” in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The other owner of the company is local businessman Valentin Kravchenko. Turizm.RF explained to Kommersant that we are talking about a joint project company, but did not disclose the details of the project.

According to Kartoteka.ruValentin Kravchenko is also a co-owner of Status LLC, which owns the Baltic Crown Hotel with 28 rooms in Zelenogradsk, as follows from the federal register of accommodation facilities. He also owns several legal entities registered in Kaliningrad.

The manager of Ivashkevich Hospitality, Stanislav Ivashkevich, suggests that within the framework of the new project “Tourism.RF” we will talk about the construction of a facility for 500–600 units in the coastal zone. It is planned to allocate about 200 rooms directly for the hotel, the rest will be apartments. According to his calculations, the volume of investment in the project could amount to 7.5–9 billion rubles, and the payback period could be seven to eight years.

“Water World” is not the only project of “Tourism.RF” in the Kaliningrad region. Earlier, the state corporation announced the creation of the White Dune resort in the region. Construction is planned to be carried out on 479 hectares near the village of Yantarny, where the tourist flow according to the plan should be 1.1 million people per year. It is planned to build 10.4 thousand rooms at the resort, the volume of investments is estimated at 440 billion rubles.

“White Dune” is planned as part of the federal project “Five Seas and Lake Baikal”, which involves the creation of a new year-round tourism infrastructure in the Baltic, Black, Azov, Japanese, Caspian Seas and Baikal. It is expected that it will increase domestic tourist traffic by 10 million people per year.

According to Rosstat, at the end of 2023, a total of 752.7 thousand people stayed in collective accommodation facilities in the Kaliningrad region. Year on year the figure increased by 45.1%. For comparison: the dynamics for Russia as a whole amounted to 20.6%, to 77.9 million people. According to CORE.XP, at the end of 2023, 329 collective accommodation facilities with a total stock of 9.8 thousand rooms operated in the Kaliningrad region.

The average cost of a booked night in Kaliningrad hotels for April-October (the high tourist season), according to Ostrovok.ru, was 4.3 thousand rubles, a year-on-year increase of 10%. According to the service, the region has become the most growing domestic destination: the number of accommodation bookings in Zelenogradsk increased by 97% year-on-year, in Kaliningrad by 61%.

The general director of the tour operator Dolphin, Sergei Romashkin, notes that tourists do not face a shortage of hotel rooms in Kaliningrad, but in the coastal zone, including Svetlogorsk and Zelenogradsk, there is a shortage of places in the high season (July-August). However, according to the expert, it is still more profitable to build hotels in Kaliningrad itself.

Previously, there were few large investment projects in the hotel market of the Kaliningrad region. And in 2022, the founder of the tour operator Biblio-Globus, Alexander Tugolukov, abandoned plans to build a hotel in the region. At the time, the market associated his decision with the limited supply of high-quality development sites in the region (see “Kommersant” dated May 11, 2022). At the same time, difficulties with the supply of building materials remain in the region – this can be seen, for example, in the cement market (see Kommersant on February 9). Although the vice-president of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers of Russia, Vadim Prasov, calls the difficulties “surmountable,” explaining that he himself is considering the construction of a facility in the Kaliningrad region.

Alexandra Mertsalova