Hotel rooms and not goals "are on top of the mind for Russia, which hosts the FIFA World Cup two years from now," according to IANS.
With hotel rooms in "chronic short supply across all its major cities and a large chunk of existing properties not making the cut, Russia is on an overdrive looking for foreign investments in the hospitality sector to cater to the hundreds of thousands of soccer fans who are expected to descend on the former Soviet state." Valery Korovkin, head of the Int'l Development division of Russia's Federal Agency for Tourism, said,"Overall we have a strong deficit of decent hotels. This is a problem. If you want to categorise hotels available now, may be half the hotels that are called hotels, won't pass the test because they are of a lower category," Korovkin's department "is tasked with monitoring of hotel construction and availability of rooms and transportation for one of the biggest sporting events in the world." He said,
"There is a need to upgrade existing hotels to the level, so that they will be palatable for tourists -- or to build new ones. This is not a matter of just one place but this is a general problem." The shortfall between the arriving fans and the rooms available for their stay "is the one thing Russia is keen to plug -- and quickly." It is also one of the reasons why the country "is keen on attracting international investment." Paresh Navani of the Russian Information Centre, India, said, "In 2018, Russia is the host of the FIFA World Cup which will need additional infrastructure in the areas of transportation, hospitality, entertainment and restaurants. The tourism department plans to add in upwards of 15,000 rooms in Russia." Rimma Sachunova, deputy chair of the St. Petersburg Committee on Tourism Development, said, "There are incentives for early investors in St. Petersburg, which includes a five-year tax-holiday. We are looking at investments starting from 30 million roubles ($455,000)" (IANS, 5/6).
