It is already famous for its brash spending, high prices and love affair with designer labels. But on Sunday Moscow confirmed its reputation as the world’s most decadently expensive city with the opening of a luxury hotel aimed at the mega-rich.
Prices at the 334-room Ritz-Carlton hotel are excessive, even for a country riding an unprecedented oil boom.
A basic room costs just over $1 000 a night.
The presidential suite will set you back $16 000 but you do get your own bulletproof dining room.
Breakfast is extra. For $700 staff will serve you the tsar’s breakfast including Cristal champagne, beluga caviar, and a truffle omelette.
The wine list features a 1961 Château Pétrus at $68 000 a bottle, and a 1969 Macallan single malt whisky priced at $400 a measure. For British guests there is an English high tea — a snip at 900 roubles ($36).
Were Lenin to wake from his mausoleum across the road and take the lift up to the hotel’s rooftop sushi bar, he might wonder why he ever bothered leading the Bolshevik revolution.
On Sunday Sergey Logvinov, a spokesperson for the hotel, admitted that the prices were a bit steep but said there were plenty of people in Moscow who could afford them.
”Moscow is known now for having 35 billionaires. That’s more than New York,” he said, as he showed the Guardian the hotel’s rococo Russian empire style lobby and wood-panelled bar.
On the 12th floor, with its panoramic views of the Kremlin and Red Square, the first guests were tucking into caviar rolls.
”There is a huge market in Moscow for luxury goods and luxury services,” Logvinov said,
”We think we have come to the right market at the right time. Our billionaires are very patriotic. Although they travel abroad they like to return to Russia.”
The hotel is built on the site of the old Intourist hotel, a Soviet landmark famous for its surly service and bugged telephones. The former hotel employed staff vetted for their political loyalty to guide foreign tourists on tightly controlled excursions.
After the end of the Soviet Union, the concrete tower on Tverskaya street acquired a seedy atmosphere: the air conditioning didn’t work and prostitutes in tiny skirts walked round the lobby.
The Ritz-Carlton, built for $350-million, offers services more in keeping with the new, uninhibitedly capitalist Moscow.
The hotel has a vodka sommelier able to advise on which vodka to knock back after a hard day’s sightseeing.
It also has what is euphemistically titled a ”nightlife butler” whose job is to guide well-heeled but possibly middle-aged and sagging guests past the strict controls of Moscow’s trendier nightclubs.
On Sunday the hotel said it expected about 80% of its guests to be foreign travellers, though it predicted the proportion of Russians would increase over time.
The problem is that despite its moneyed elite, the average monthly wage in Russia is still only about $500, putting the hotel way out of reach for most people.
Observers also point out that Moscow already has plenty of expensive places to stay, with even grotty, Stalin-era hotel rooms costing about $200 a night.
The one thing the Russian capital currently lacks is budget and mid-range accommodation.
But Oliver Eller, the hotel’s general manager, said less well-off visitors should not be deterred.
Ordinary Muscovites were welcome to come in, take a look at the hotel and order a cup of coffee, a relative snip at 220 roubles.
In the lap of luxury
Moscow does not have the monopoly on luxurious and expensive hotels.
The Burj al-Arab, a luxury hotel in Dubai, is divided into 202 duplex suites. The smallest occupies 169 square metres and the largest 780 square metres. Prices for the least expensive suites range from $1 000 to more than $6 000 a night. The most expensive can cost more than $15 000 a night.
One of its restaurants, the Al Muntaha (meaning ”highest” or ”ultimate”), is located 200m above the Persian Gulf, with a view of Dubai and access via a panoramic elevator.
The Four Seasons hotel in New York has a huge lobby with giant armchairs next to a vast log fire. Brunch is its speciality. Benedict Brunch, named after the New York chef Legrand Benedict, who invented eggs benedict as a hangover cure, is at its best in Manhattan. Prices range from $695 a night to $15 000 for the penthouse.
Apartment prices at Claridge’s hotel in London range from £479 to £5 430 a night. The Royal suite, at £3 330 a night, has a grand piano formerly owned by Arthur Sullivan and WS Gilbert, who used it to compose many of their operettas. It has a separate dining room with butler for 12 guests.
During the film festival, the penthouse suite at Hotel Martinez in Cannes, France, has a nightly rate of just over £20 000.
Guests get 1 000 square metres of space comprising four bedrooms, two whirlpool baths overlooking the Mediterranean, two saunas, two living rooms, two dining rooms and two dressing rooms. – Guardian Unlimited Â