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.

Vladimir Putin, working as the Russian Prime Minister these days, invited countries of Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) to build hotels near the future Olympic park in Sochi. He suggests they name hotels by the names of their country’s capitals, and use it to promote their countries and cultures.

Besides Russia, members of EurAsEC are Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. If they accept the idea and join the project, Sochi can have complex of hotels where visitors will learn cultural specifics and traditions of these countries.