Fans at the 2018 World Cup "could find themselves sleeping on boats or pitching tents in Soviet-era summer camps as Russia reins in spending on the tournament by cutting back on the number of hotels," according to Collett & Stubbs of REUTERS. Back in '10, when it won the right to host the finals, Russia "promised to provide 100,000 rooms for visiting supporters." Since then an "economic downturn" has forced Russia to "scale back its ambitions." The government in April axed plans for 25 hotels to save 27B rubles ($475M) and last month reduced its limit on total spending on the tournament to 631.5B rubles ($11.2B), saving 30B rubles ($530M) on accommodation. A source close to the organizing committee said that planners had "few other options to reduce costs, and had discussed using boats to provide temporary bed spaces" in host cities that are near a river or the coast. The source said, "You can't cut the stadium, you can't cut the training grounds, but when you have 20-30 hotels of course there is flexibility there." Organizers in Nizhny Novgorod, a host city about 400km (250 miles) east of Moscow, "plan to let fans stay in vacated university dormitories and say budget cuts will not diminish the accommodation on offer." Nizhny Novgorod Region Deputy Trade & Industry Minister Maxim Podovinnikov said, "One legacy of the Soviet Union is the Pioneer camps, used by children in summer time. In the woods, near the rivers, lakes and water areas, beautiful places. Those places would be available." There are signs that "private operators, however, are reluctant to invest in Russia's struggling hotel market." Investment advisory firm VIY Management Founding Partner Andrey Yakunin said that "high interest rates made building hotels specifically for the World Cup unviable." Yakunin: "Anywhere in the world that had major sporting events where the hospitality infrastructure was developed to be paid back in two weeks, they were a failure" (REUTERS, 7/14).
