The Yakhonty hotel chain can expand its geographic presence

The chain of country hotels “Yakhonty”, associated with the president of the CSKA football club Evgeny Giner, may begin development in the regions. The company has already registered a separate structure that plans to manage a hotel in Ulyanovsk. Experts say regional expansion is a good idea, but warn that some cities across the country have very few quality facilities.

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Yakhonty network, Evgeniy Giner, received 50% each in Yakhonty Regions Hotels.ru LLC and Yakhonty Stolitsa Hotels.ru LLC registered in October 2023, follows from SPARK data. Other co-owners of these legal entities are member of the board of directors of the Yakhonty network Miro Amadyan and Vika Dasni. The latter also owns a number of structures of the Agroinnovation holding, the beneficiary of which is Mr. Giner (see “Kommersant” dated June 7, 2021). The Yakhonty network did not respond to Kommersant.

The creation of new legal entities may indicate regional expansion of the network. In October, on the HeadHunter website, the company was looking for a hotel manager in Ulyanovsk with 220 rooms. Managing partner of Ivashkevich Hospitality Stanislav Ivashkevich notes that there are only a few such facilities in the city and the nearest suburbs. Construction or purchase of a finished hotel, according to him, will cost 2–2.5 billion rubles.

Kommersant’s interlocutor, familiar with the Ulyanovsk hotel market, does not rule out that Yakhonty will participate in the construction of an aquathermal complex in the city on Oktyabrskaya Street. This project was to be implemented by the Spa-Progress Center, whose founder is Andrey Kozlov. Kommersant was unable to contact him.

Evgeny Giner is the president of the CSKA football club. Until now, the Yakhonty chain associated with it has been developing hotel projects in the Moscow region and neighboring regions. Now its portfolio includes suburban properties “Yakhonty Istra” in the Istra district (137 rooms), “Yakhonty Tarusa” in the Kaluga region (212 rooms) and “Yakhonty Noginsk” in the Noginsky district (313 rooms). The company bought the last facility last year for 707 million rubles. within the framework of bankruptcy trading (see “Kommersant” dated April 25, 2022).

During the current crisis, country hotels in the Moscow region are showing good results. In January-August 2023, the total number of guests of such hotels, according to Rosstat, increased by 11.2% year-on-year, to 3.2 million people. The average occupancy of suburban properties, according to CORE.XP estimates, increased over the same period by 3.6 percentage points, to 54.7%.

Stanislav Ivashkevich calls the idea of ​​development in the regions for Russian hotel chains promising. In the country as a whole, the hotel market is saturated only in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Volgograd and Sochi, he adds. At the same time, earlier the governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoyt, reported Evgeny Giner’s interest in the construction of a hotel complex in the village of Krasnikovo, Pristensky district. Investments in the project were estimated at 250 million rubles, but it has not yet started.

Interest in the hotel business in the regions is now, in principle, quite high, notes managing partner of Alliance Hotel Management Vadim Prasov. According to him, the company receives two or three requests a week to participate in or manage various projects: “Foreign companies no longer sign new agreements, and there are not many understandable Russian players.” However, the deputy chairman of the Union of Tourism and Hospitality, Roman Yeremyan, draws attention to the fact that due to the distance from large financial centers, it is quite difficult to develop hotels in the regions: more investment is required in creating infrastructure, and many problems, such as, for example, finding personnel, are more acute .

Alexandra Mertsalova, Anatoly Kostyrev