The buyer of the five-star SO hotel in St. Petersburg has been named
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The son of the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg Alexander Govorunov, Alexey, seems to have managed to find a buyer for the five-star SO hotel, the market value of which reaches 4 billion rubles. The likely new owner of the property is Voznesensky Prospekt JSC, which may act in the interests of the shareholder of NK Bank and the Dynamics Group of Companies, Viktor Grigoriev. Although the occupancy of expensive hotels in St. Petersburg is growing, experts warn that this segment has been hit hardest by the lack of foreign tourists.
Voznesensky Prospekt JSC became the owner of the five-star SO hotel with 137 rooms on Voznesensky Prospekt in St. Petersburg at the beginning of October 2023, as follows from an extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate (available from Kommersant). The owners of Voznesensky Prospekt are not listed in SPARK; its general director is Arseny Grigoriev. He also heads the Moscow Sfera Group of Companies. This structure is indicated in the list of affiliates of the Dynamics group and NK Bank. Their co-owner, according to the latest published reports, is Viktor Grigoriev.
Before this, the owner of the SO Hotel was Forum LLC owned by Alexei Govorunov, the son of the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg Alexander Govorunov. He told Kommersant that the changes in the Unified State Register are of a technical nature, but did not explain their meaning. NK Bank and SO Hotel did not answer Kommersant’s questions.
The SO Hotel opened in 2011 and initially operated under the W brand (now owned by Marriott International). In 2018, the facility came under the control of the French Accor and changed its name to SO. Accor’s regional director for Russia, Georgia and the CIS, Alexis Delaroff, declined to comment.
Viktor Grigoriev’s interest in the hotel market was not previously known. The Dynamika Group of Companies, which belongs to him, includes enterprises in the aviation industry and transport. In addition, in partnership with Rostec, the group is developing the Technodinamika holding. In the past, Mr. Grigoriev headed the directorate of helicopter programs at Oboronprom, when it was headed by the current head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, Denis Manturov.
According to Denis Platov, director of the Nikoliers capital markets department, the market value of the hotel is 3.8–4.2 billion rubles. It took a long time to find a buyer for the SO hotel due to its high cost, so the deal could have gone through at a discount, Sergei Duvanov, project manager of the investment department of NF Group in St. Petersburg, does not rule out. Investors perceive hotel real estate as a protective asset that retains value in the long term, despite inflation, explains Andrey Petelin, CEO of the management company Citytel.
At the end of the third quarter of 2023, occupancy of five-star hotels in St. Petersburg increased by 13% year-on-year and amounted to 66%, and the cost of accommodation increased by 20%, to 16.3 thousand rubles. per day, calculated at Nikoliers. But in terms of occupancy levels, expensive hotels, which historically were aimed at foreign tourists, are now significantly inferior to more budget hotels, says Andrei Petelin. In addition, in conditions of limited demand, the cost of a room in the high price segment is growing much more slowly, he explains.
At the end of nine months of 2023, investments in hotel real estate in St. Petersburg reached 14 billion rubles, which became a record in the history of the market, IBC Real Estate notes. Such results are associated with the sale of six properties in St. Petersburg to AFK Sistema to the Norwegian Wenaas Group. But large foreign owners have already gotten rid of the main hotel assets in the city, so there are no prerequisites for an increase in the number of transactions, Andrei Petelin believes.
Interest in the construction of hotels in St. Petersburg will also decline, since domestic tourism is not able to compensate for the lack of foreigners, development expert Andrei Veresov believes. In these conditions, he said, investors will purchase existing properties or switch to development in Altai and the Krasnodar Territory.
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