In this week’s government’s decision all tourism infrastructure in Russia – that includes hotels, ski resorts, beaches, and other tourist and recreational venues – will go through mandatory classification. And it will all start with hotels in Sochi.

Hotels in Russia are not in a hurry to get classified, as the procedure can be expensive, but the benefits are not always clear. Currently, only 5% of all Russia’s hotels went through classification. Meanwhile, Sochi’s commitement to the Olympics is 57 000 hotel rooms ranging two to five stars. Mandatory classification of all hotels will help to understand what is currently missing, what needs to be built.

How soon all this will start rolling wasn’t annouced.

On unrelated (well, related to hotels) news, Hilton will open Doubletree by Hilton Sochi-Adler hotel in the year 2012.

Turkish Airlines announced launch of flights from Istanbul to Sochi this summer season. Flights to Sochi will be three times a week.

Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone said he aims to bring the motor-racing series to Russia by 2012 and New York by 2013, in a move to have up to 20 events in the Grand Prix calendar.

Formula One will most likely be held in the Russian capital of Moscow or in Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, while at least three places have been identified for a circuit outside Manhattan, Ecclestone said.

This info is from Bloomberg.

Formula One is quite popular in Russia (my brother is huge fan, and doen’t miss a single qualification or a race), and Russian fans have had hopes for Moscow to get onto the F1 series calendar for years. The location for the stadium outside of the city has been selected, and, if I’m not mistaken, even the construction has been started. However, no finalized plans and dates were ever stated, and I don’t know where this project is. There have been talks about F1 and Moscow’s government not agreeing on how to split the profits.

This season, for the first time ever, a Russian pilot, Vitaliy Petrov, is participating in Formula One, as one of the Renault drivers. Btw, if you are flying Aeroflot this April, check out his interview in their onboard magazine.

Formula One has already been to Sochi, last year with exibitory race. It was Renault who brought it’s cars to Sochi. Here are some pictures from that event.

(c) shuriksochi

Read the rest of this entry »