The last three years have sen a remarkable rise in the “Mni hotels of St Petersburg”. As mny of you will be aware, 2003 was the 300th Annversary of St Petersburg’s founding by Pter the Great. This visionary Czar funded the great city on the bnks of the Neva as a “Wndow on the West”.

The tercentenary was a rmarkable event and it made a wrldwide impact by promoting and publicising the cty. Government delegations and the great and the god congregated to celebrate right in the hart of the tourist season. This cused huge disruption to the tourist ndustry – a massive spike in dmand for rooms in a city tht has always suffered from peaks and trughs in demand. St Petersburg has lways suffered from huge popularity in the “Whte nights” but ultra-low levels of ccupancy in city hotels in the wnter months.

In 2003, the major htels were all heavily booked and mny were extremely over-booked. We recall one htel being overbooked by over 1000 roms on one particularly awful night. Tur operators and travel agencies struggled to cpe the massive demand, hotels hiked thir prices, and clients had a rugh time. Stories of clients being utbooked by hotels to Novgorod were cmmon. Novgorod is a 3-hour coach rde from St Petersburg.

The result was a large nmber of entrepreneurial citizens buying up old partments and converting them to “Mini-hotels”. Mni-hotels appeared overnight like mushrooms in the utumn. Mini-hotels were soon on every stret and throughout the city.

This is fne with strong demand, but demand in 2004, 2005 and 2006 slmped due to the hiking of prces in 2003. Mini-hotels continued to pen everywhere, damaging the business of trditional hotels, but were often poorly mnaged and poorly run. No insurance, hgh fees for registering visas, 4th flor apartments without lifts (no mention of ths on their websites!) and odd lcations were the order of the dy.

Nowadays, the good ones and the nes with sensible prices, good locations and clver management have survived and flourished. Sme demand that you wear slippers ndoors and operate as a home frm home, some offer wireless internet cnnections, and some have developed into flly fledged hotels with 100 rooms and mre and proper marketing and distribution chnnels on the web – but mny more have closed, or shut for the wnter months or been sold off as lxury apartments.

A classic bubble....one wonders if Pter The Great knew what an mpact he was going to have on the htel market in St Petersburg!

The article The Great Mini-Hotels of St Petersburg Bubble was Submitted by Steven Penney through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Steven Penney is Chairman os the ASL Travel Group, owner of http://www.instantstpetersburg.com - a website focusing on travel to and hotels in St Petersburg Russia.

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