First Indigo Hotel In Russia - launch in 2012
The 119-room Hotel Indigo St Petersburg Tchaikovskiy is set to open in summer 2012. Vega Ltd owns the 101-year old townhouse, previously an unbranded hotel, which will also house a restaurant and a bar.
The hotel is on Tchaikovskogo Street in the east of the city centre, just 20 minutes by road from Pulkovo InternationalAirport, and five minutes from Moskovsky train station. It’s next to the Summer Gardens and the Stieglitz Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts, ranked one of the most important museums in St Petersburg. A short walk from the Hermitage Museum, the Russian Museum and the Winter Palace, with easy access to the famous street, Nevsky Prospect, the hotel is in an ideal location for guests wishing to take advantage of the city’s heritage.
The hotel will create 80 new jobs when it opens as well as posts for up to 50 contractors during the rebrand.
Last month, new chief executive officer for IHG in Europe, Angela Brav, joined the British Prime Minister David Cameron and other senior British ministers on a trade mission to Russia, during which high level meetings were held with the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The company announced it planned to have 100 hotels open across Russia and the CIS by 2020 creating 8,000 new jobs for local people in addition to the 2,500 already working at hotels from the IHG family of brands across Russia and the CIS.
IHG outlined its growth plans for Russia which included introducing the Hotel Indigo brand to Moscow and St Petersburg where IHG sees significant potential for growth.
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Hotel Indigo caters for guests who want a boutique hotel experience without sacrificing the reassurance and benefits of booking with a big hotel company. The design of Hotel Indigo properties reflects the local area. The hotels combine personal service and a great restaurant offering.
Every Hotel Indigo is unique, making it ideally suited to conversion properties. Conversions are attractive to developers because they require less financing than new builds and can be up and running in a shorter period of time.
The Hotel Indigo roll out across Europe is gathering pace. It began in January 2009 with the opening of the Hotel Indigo London Paddington. There are now four Hotel Indigo properties open in Europe and nine in the pipeline, due to open in the next few years. The Hotel Indigo Berlin Centre Hardenbergstraße, the first Hotel Indigo property in continental Europe, opens early in 2012.
There are 38 Hotel Indigo properties open across the world and 60 further hotels in the development pipeline.
Aron Libinson, IHG’s vice president for development in Russia and CIS, said: “Signing the Hotel Indigo St Petersburg Tchaikovskiy in such a fantastic location is testament to the strength of our youngest hotel brand. The phenomenal growth of this brand in the current economic climate shows that we have a winning formula with Hotel Indigo. We believe the demand for all our brands will continue to grow over the next 10 years as domestic and international travel increases across Russia.”
In addition to next summer’s launch of the Hotel Indigo brand in Russia, IHG’s luxury InterContinental brand returns to Russia later this year after a decade away with the opening of InterContinental Moscow Tverskaya. The 203-room hotel will open on Russia’s most famous street creating 260 new jobs for local people.
Last month IHG also announced it was opening the Moscow branch of the IHG Academy in February 2012 to deliver international standard hospitality training in Russia. There will be 15-20 places on the three year course, which will see students spending four days a week in hotels from the IHG family of brands, and one day a week at the Moscow State University of Tourism.
The course will also include a three-month work experience placement where students will work in a hotel outside Russia. Once qualified, students will have the opportunity to apply for jobs at supervisory level.
IHG first entered Russia in 1998 when it opened the Holiday Inn Vinogradovo in Moscow. Thirteen years later, IHG is expanding into regional centres and new fast-growing cities with well-established business communities and tourist attractions such as Samara, Ekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk and others.
Today IHG has 16 hotels (3,397 rooms) in the development pipeline in Russia and CIS due to open in the next three to five years.
City.Mobi
Also in Russia today, City.Mobi is celebrating the success of its new guide to Moscow.
City.Mobi offers the most comprehensive mobile travel guides available, with over 800 cities in 200 countries listed. Each is developed by the City.Mobi team to combine into a single global travel directory.
However, each city retains its own mobile identity via a dedicated domain. Already on offer are Brussels.Mobi, Paris.Mobi, Sanfrancisco.Mobi and Sydney.Mobi.
Moscow.mobi is the latest in this illustrious line up, offering click to call functionality – which means no scribbling down telephone numbers.
Most entries are also linked to websites where users can quickly access more detailed information if needed.
Other key features include information on accommodation, restaurants, attractions, entertainment, nightlife, shopping, and transport.
City.Mobi guides include user reviews and traveller utilities such as a translation guide, currency converter, news and local weather guide.