Taras Fomchenkov
for EcoToutism Expert 
The draft law on a new register of accommodation facilities, which is expected to include not only hotels, but also beaches and ski slopes, come into force on January 1, 2025. It was approved by the Federation Council of the Russian Federation on November 27.
According to Tatyana Lobach, Deputy Head of the State Duma Committee on Tourism, the hotels, at first, will be included in the register, and then, their star-rating will be determined. “We are transferring the control over maintaining this register to the regions, and the local authorities should also realize and understand how they will do this, who will do this, and who will be involved in this,” the deputy explained.
The accommodation facilities market is quite extensive. According to the figures announced by Dmitry Chernyshenko, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, at a meeting chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin, there are about 24 thousand hotels in Russia, with over 910 thousand classified hotel rooms. The largest number of classified collective accommodation facilities are located in the Krasnodar Territory; according to Rosstat (Russian Federal State Statistics Service), this region accounted for 17.1 percent of all hotels in 2023, country hotels and other facilities intended for accommodating tourists. Moscow ranks second (5.9 percent).
As for the glamping sites popular now with tourists, which will also be assigned ‘stars’, there are over four hundred of them, according to Russia’s Glamping Association, and 241 of them operate year-round. The growth dynamics of glamping accommodation facilities is impressive as their number has increased 40 times over the past five years.
The total number of rooms is over 1 million. At the same time, 54 percent of the accommodation facilities do not have ‘stars’, another 22.5 percent are 3-star ones, and 5-star hotels in Russia make just about 1.5 percent. In recent years, the number of accommodation facilities has been constantly growing; thanks to the federal government support programs, about 4.5 thousand hotel rooms were built this year.
Some types of accommodation facilities can be voluntarily included in the register. There are seven exceptions, including children’s camps, social and rehabilitation institutions, farm households, medical organizations with the exception of health resorts, as well as health resorts belonging to law enforcement agencies and federal executive bodies subordinate to the president, accommodation facilities of religious organizations, and special housing stock (including company-owned apartments and dormitories).
At the same time, health resorts already included in the register of resort accommodation funds will be transferred to the new register automatically. However, the voluntary desire of places of rest and medical treatment to be included in the register will be welcomed.
The rules for publication of advertisements made by accommodation facilities on aggregator sites is also expected to be stricter. The publication will be prohibited, if it does not contain an identification number from the register and a link to the register. The publication will also be prohibited on classifieds (announcement boards) and even on social networks.
It is worth mentioning that the draft law was prepared on the instructions of Russian President Vladimir Putin to increase the number of hotel and accommodation rooms and improve the quality of tourism services provided. “In fact, this is now the basic law for the entire tourism industry,” Sergei Altukhov, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, explained to the media. “The President has set the task of not just increasing the number of hotel rooms and accommodation facilities, but also qualitatively revising the approach to accommodation facilities, increasing the level of tourism services provided.” Roman Arseniy, Head of the Department of Tourism and Hotel Business at the Russian International Academy of Tourism (RIAT), an expert in hotel classification, commented on the law that not only hotels would be classified, but other accommodation facilities as well. “Accommodation facilities made from non-permanent structures are among them, such as all kinds of glamping and camping sites. Changes have been made to the definitions of accommodation facilities, for example, land plots were added. This allows to classify not only buildings as accommodation facilities, but also everything that is on the land plots. Guest houses are not yet included in the law, but it looks like they will be also classified” the expert said.
The key innovation is that different accommodation facilities will be classified, the register will be different, and from January 1, 2025, it will be included in the federal hospitality system, already developed by Rosaccreditation (Federal Service for Accreditation) but not yet put into effect, Roman Arseniy adds.
“The new register will include both ski slopes and beaches, not only hotels,” he added. And he summed up that the classification will be held in two-stages; at first, the type of accommodation facility will be determined, and then the category will be assigned. And by September 1, 2025, all accommodation facilities will have to undergo the first stage of classification.
