April 16, 2013. International hotel chains are expected to break into Yekaterinburg market soon: according to the findings of a research conducted by Ural-Hermes Consultant Company, the city is growing increasingly appealing for international investors from the hotel industry. A number of international chains will probably set up their hotels here by 2020.

In fact, such chains as the four- and five-star Kempinski, Hilton, Radisson, and Sheraton have already announced their plans to build their hotels in Yekaterinburg in 2013-2020. At the moment, such international chains as Rezidor (Park Inn), Hyatt (Hyatt Regency), Wyndham (Ramada), Vienna International (Angelo), and Accor (Novotel) are already running their business here.

Ural-Hermes Director-General Alexander Zasukhin believes that the international hotel operators have grown so interested in Yekaterinburg because the city is gaining increasingly more political, cultural, and economic weight. At the same time, he feels that the local hotel market is still not saturated, and there’s room for new players. In Europe, for one, there are 6.3 hotel rooms per resident in Prague, 7.2 in Berlin, 9 in Paris, 12.1 in Vienna, and 16.7 in Amsterdam, whereas in Yekaterinburg, the figure only comes to 3.6.