An event directorate may appear in each region, and this will help promote small towns and their hotels. Each city should have its own development agency, and this will help attract hotel investors here. It is worth betting on uniqueness in each hotel, and this will help the hotel itself become a new city landmark.
In the near future, a new structure may appear in each region of Russia — the regional event directorate. Christopher Konstantinidi, Director of the Research Institute of Economics and Management of Sustainable Tourism Development of the SSU, Adviser to the Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, told about the beginning of the relevant work at a press conference in TASS dedicated to the drivers of the tourist flow in Russia.
Christopher Konstantinidi, Director of the Research Institute of Economics and Management of Sustainable Tourism Development of the SSU, Adviser to the Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation “In 2018, we made an event directorate of resorts in the Krasnodar Territory — and this is a real experience that today my colleagues and I from the National Congress Bureau are starting to “package” and replicate. What’s the point? The event directorate coordinates the work: everyone has a lot of event calendars in files or in printouts lying on the table, but this is all a non—working story, so the first task of the new structure is to create an interactive standardized event calendar that would be updated on a daily basis and on which travel companies, representatives of the HoReCa segment, regional authorities, public associations and all others involved, including investors and developers. The second task of the event directorate is to provide methodological support to those who want to hold an event, but do not know how: that is, we are talking about creating a kind of event tourism school. Plus administrative and information support – to explain to people how to issue documents, how to accompany and so on. Another area of work is to help the region promote its largest events and, conversely, to delay federal events on its territory.”
Answering the question BFM.ru Whether we can get an all-Russian event calendar in the future, the expert noted: this is a difficult task, but realistic. Although for a start, the regional calendar will be quite enough for the hotel business operating in small towns — as a means of attracting attention to interesting events in the city, to modern means of accommodating its guests and to promising investment and development points on the city map.
If the creation of regional event directorates is a matter of the future, then some small and medium—sized cities already have their own development agencies, and the economic (including hotel, since we are talking about a specific segment) results of their work are impressive. One of the most striking examples is the small monocity Monchegorsk located in the Murmansk region, which was known only by the employees of Norilsk Nickel about ten years ago, and today almost everyone knows who was interested in the tourist opportunities of the Russian North at least once.
“Tourism is actively developing in our country, every year more and more travelers choose Imandra and the city surrounded by lakes for a tourist trip. This increases the demand for hospitality facilities. For example, today there are only four hotels in Monchegorsk, which cannot always accommodate the increasing flow of tourists every year. In addition, the level of available hotels does not exceed three stars. And the tourist flow is growing every year: Five years ago, it was barely 16 thousand people a year, but by the end of 2023, about 58 thousand people visited Monchegorsk,” says Alexander Polenkov, head of the Business and Investment department of the Monchegorsk Development Agency.
The agency itself appeared only four years ago and today actively helps to attract investments to the city, offering interesting investment lots for both large businesses and small businesses, helping investors prepare an application for financing, providing them with information support, developing a business plan and preliminary examination of the project.
Alexander Polenkov, Head of Business and Investment at the Monchegorsk Development Agency, “The economy of hotels in small towns should consist of several components. In addition to income from the main type of activity, the best option for such hotels is to receive income from related businesses: for example, spa centers, rental of conference rooms, placement of a number of services for tourists and local residents on the territory of the hotel – restaurants, beauty salons, medical centers and so on. Of course, the more rooms, the more you can earn, so opening hotels with 50-60 rooms will be an excellent option for starting hotels in small towns, and then you can consider opening a chain of mini-hotels, which will bring even more profit to the owners in the future. The hotel business has gone through polar states in a few years. During the pandemic, it suffered quite severely: tourism was practically closed at that time, and even five-star hotels were forced to rent rooms monthly at the price of ordinary apartments in order to get at least some income and keep staff. In 2022, the situation has completely changed. External restrictions have led to the massive closure of popular international destinations, the reduction of air travel has also significantly “dried up” tourist flows abroad, so the main tourist flow is now redistributed within the country. Naturally, there was a shortage of hotels not only in the main tourist centers of Russia, but also in small towns. The growth of tourist flow, higher prices and increased hotel occupancy have become the main reasons for investors’ interest in building hotels.”
As for Monchegorsk itself, today a potential investor can consider various options here — from the construction of tourist facilities, such as the multifunctional country complex “Port” on the shore of Lake Imandra, to investments in a hotel or restaurant facility. “If we talk about the development of the hotel business in Monchegorsk, now we offer potential investors to consider the possibility of investing in the construction of an apartment hotel with 60 rooms of the four-star category in the city center. According to preliminary calculations, the volume of investments in the project exceeds 350 million rubles. According to research, the discounted payback period of the project is about 6.5 years, and the profit, according to preliminary estimates, will be about 6 million rubles per month. Our project will stand out significantly from other hotels in Monchegorsk and will further increase the flow of tourists,” Alexander Polenkov believes.
Well, it remains to find out the opinion of the architects. Do they often receive orders for the construction of hotels in small towns now? Do they find interest in such work, and what exactly is it? Do they believe that such a hotel can become a city landmark and start generating tourist traffic on its own?
“Small towns have a special and unique environment. Most often there are no large city-forming enterprises stimulating their extensive growth, so the old borders and landscape remain practically untouched. Working with urban fabric in such places can and should be focused on quality, not volume. This strategy is also facilitated by the presence, as a rule, of a large number of historical buildings/artifacts,” emphasizes Georgy Tyugaev, head of the HADAA architectural bureau.
In his opinion, one of the main problems of tourism development in small towns lies in the information vacuum: residents of the country do not know anything about many of them. “The interest of the guests is concentrated in only a few locations, which causes an overheating effect. And if a megacity like St. Petersburg can cope with it due to its scale and level of infrastructure development, then the same Suzdal with its ten thousand population and 1 million tourists annually during the peak season is simply not able to master such flows. Cozy places become excessively noisy and inaccessible in terms of the cost of accommodation and services, which are insufficient both in terms of volume and quality. Travelers are forced to settle in former sanatoriums, guest houses, morally and physically outdated hotels for serious money, all this is the result of the new concept of “overturism” for modern Russia, the expert continues.
A partial way out of this situation, of course, may be more active construction of modern hotels in already popular places, but Georgy Tyugaev calls this measure alone insufficient. Due to the huge hype around domestic tourism, it is necessary to deal with other places that have not yet been properly interested in by business.
“As a textbook example, we can name the city of Ostashkov, located on the shore of Lake Seliger. Its population is only 17 thousand people, but at the same time a huge number of natural and historical attractions are concentrated on the territory and nearby. The number of monuments here exceeds the density of the same Suzdal! In addition, an important feature of the topography of the city is that its large part in the form of a peninsula cuts deeply into the lake, ending with the Klinchen Nature Reserve, which is actually in the center of the reservoir. All this forms unsurpassed view characteristics and structure of the space. Now our bureau is actively working on creating a concept of a tourist cluster in this place, based on a creative rethinking of several architectural monuments in its center at once,” says Georgy Tyugaev.
Georgy Tyugaev, head of the HADAA architectural bureau, “So far, large architects are not so often approached with requests to work with modern projects in small towns, the trend is just beginning to gain momentum. The target audience is looking for authenticity and still sees it in family hotels or splint design, which is associated with antiquity. However, in many ways this interest is due to the banal lack of a high-quality alternative. There are practically no network brands everywhere, which could be an excellent attraction for residents of megacities. Their slow entry into the market is due to the complexity of calculating the business model and the lack of a sufficient number of qualified personnel on the ground. So far, the biggest driver for the development of such locations is the Ministry of Construction’s competition for landscaping projects “Development of small towns and historical settlements”. Those who work on them are often then involved in the processes related to the local hotel industry, the qualitative playing of historical heritage. From the point of view of morphotype, small towns are very similar to old Europe with low-rise buildings, and all new facilities should be compact, with a room stock of about 50 units, which in turn, as we understand, is quite difficult to monetize, because the minimum recommended number of rooms starts from 150. There are exceptions — relatively new large facilities built in the 90s, but almost all of them do not stand up to criticism in terms of the quality of architecture and space design. It is almost impossible to reconstruct them in a modern way, but they can only be dismantled with the re-development of the site.”
It is worth clearly separating proposals for architectural work in just small towns with tourist potential and those where there is already a good financial base for the implementation of concepts in practice, continues Alexander Starikov, partner of the Syntaxis architectural bureau. “In the second case, it may be a place associated with mining, the oil industry, where tourism is more a matter of prestige, and they are ready to support bold ideas. In this case, the formulation of tasks for the designer comes at the level of general phrases and ideas that need to be formalized in the form of a high-quality technical task. It is this stage that is the starting point and often decisive in determining the success of a development product as such. If such work is neglected, the whole process risks becoming unmanageable and not meeting the expectations of the parties. If megacities such as Moscow forgive mistakes and unsuccessful projects do not stop the movement of the market, then in small towns a failed case often means a long—term decrease in interest in the development of the industry among both investors and the authorities,” the expert recalls.
Alexander Starikov, partner at Syntaxis Architectural Bureau, “The general trend in the development of tourism potential is related to the centripetal movement of capital and the redistribution of finances within the country at all levels. The influx of money into the regions, given the current foreign policy situation and the difficulties of visiting abroad, creates prerequisites for their development with the help of new recreational recreation areas. It is worth assuming that in this case, new generation hotel facilities will appear faster in small towns not with the most unique cultural heritage, but with the highest standard of living and prosperity. They will be aimed at users from the same region or neighboring ones and will easily do without an external influx of guests. Of course, unique points on the map with less developed economies also have a chance to unleash their tourism potential, but later.”
According to Georgy Tyugaev, the defining typology for small towns is boutique hotels. Their design is almost always associated with the identity of the place, culture, history, famous personalities, features of the natural environment, significant events, and the task of the architect is to unobtrusively and elegantly beat all this in concept, fit into context, giving the object a flavor, but not to the detriment of modern standards, efficiency and business strategy of the project.
“The calculation of future architectural solutions begins with an analysis of the site, thanks to which we find patterns, ideas and design of the hotel. The history of the place, the peculiarities of the lifestyle of the people of this location, the relief, the presence of artifacts serve as a source of inspiration and a tool for unlocking the business potential of the product. We take all these factors and create a new image based on them, which is organically integrated into the context of the environment. For an architect working with these concepts, it is important to find the “genius of the place” in order to embody it in real volume. A failed approach in advance would be the construction of outright kitsch or an attempt to literally repeat historical buildings, deceive the visitor by passing off a new model as something valuable. The user immediately sees such a substitution, and interest in the object can fade very quickly. On the other hand, excessive contrast and the lack of connection of the new structure with the context of the urban fabric can also be called a failure: after all, if the building is perceived as an alien element of the environment, it causes rejection,” Alexander Starikov shares his experience.
It is curious that, according to his feelings, working with local players (namely, they build hotels in small towns) is always more time-consuming, since often these structures do not have a professional technical customer who would competently draw up a technical specification. “An architect needs to do this kind of work on his own in order for expectations to coincide with the result. However, on the other hand, you get more freedom, you can offer some non-standard solutions that are unacceptable for a large network player with its reinforced concrete corporate standards. Of course, the budget plays a decisive role and is the main framework for working with such facilities,” Alexander Starikov admits.
“Working with local local players is an order of magnitude more difficult from the point of view of the benefits of the architect, the pragmatics of the processes and the calculation of the economic model, but it is more interesting from the point of view of unlocking creative potential. Quite often, very interesting, passionate and extraordinary people get involved in such stories, who are sincerely focused on creating a unique product,” confirms Georgy Tyugaev.
By the way, as Marina Starchikova, co-owner of the restaurant and hotel holding WeFamilyGroup, admits, in her dreams, for example, tourists travel not just to small towns, but also to small hotels. After all, if large international networks rely on uniform sizes, services and standards (as they say, Marriott is also valuable in Marriott Africa), then local players are really focused on creating something in a single copy every time. Every visit to such a hotel is always a bit of an opening, and then the responsibility of the business is to make sure that your local network is trusted no less than Marriott, so that they want to come to you again and again, so that they wait for every new hotel and every new city, says Marina Starchikova.
Architects can also help ensure that the hotel itself becomes a landmark of a small town and begins to develop urban infrastructure. “Such an opportunity really exists, and we can see it in various parts of Europe, where compact facilities from renowned bureaus appear, which are initially designed to become a powerful tourist promotion factor. As an example, we can mention a small museum named after the outstanding mountaineer Reinhold Messner, designed by Zaha Hadid right on the slope of one of the rocks in Switzerland. If we talk about Russia, it is not even architecture that plays a greater role, but the connection with the identity of the place and the extent to which the hotel provides a unique user experience. It can be formed to a greater extent not through standardized and high-quality service, as in a megalopolis, but through immersion in the atmosphere. However, such an approach often requires direct supervision by the owner or his proxies,” says Georgy Tyugaev.
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Alexander Starikov agrees with his colleague. “I think in the current situation, the chance of such scenarios being realized is only growing, as huge intellectual, financial and organizational investments in the tourism industry are really visible. Plus, competition is growing, which gives reason for optimism and the appearance of iconic interesting architectural solutions-attractors for the tourist flow. Russia’s potential is huge, and now there is an inevitable need for its implementation in practice,” the expert concludes.
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