Andrey Ershov
In October, the State Duma will consider a draft federal law (No. 409713-8) on conducting a pilot project on providing hotel services in guest houses. It was considered by committees of the Federation Council as part of discussing it prior to ‘first reading’.
The draft federal law proposed by the State Duma deputies provides for the experiment to be carried out from April 1, 2024 through December 31, 2026 in the Krasnodar Territory, Crimea and Sevastopol. The document defines the concepts of a guest house, rooms, and auxiliary premises. Guest houses must meet certain requirements and be included in the Unified List of Classified Hotels provided for by the Law “On the Fundamentals of Tourism Activities in the Russian Federation.”
What is different compared to hotels?
According to the draft law, a guest house should be located on a plot of land intended for individual housing construction, it should have no more than 15 rooms and the total area of a guest house should not exceed 1,000 square meters. Moreover, an owner of a guest house must be registered at the place of residence either in this guest house or in another house located on the same site where the guest house is.
Based on the results of consideration and discussions by the committees of the Council of Federation, senators noted the relevance of the draft law, since today the current legislation provides only for the format of hotels of various categories and thus prohibits providing hotel services in the format of guest houses, although this is exactly what happens everywhere. The senators believe that the adoption of this law will help people in understanding of how they can legalize their activities. The senators also recommend to include a clause determining the procedure for monitoring the activities of participants in the experiment.
Buryatia, Baikal, then everywhere...
In addition, during the discussions it was proposed to include the Republic of Buryatia in the list of the regions taking part in the experiment, in addition to the Krasnodar Territory, Crimea and Sevastopol. This initiative was made by Vyaheslav Nagovitsyn, the senator from the region who previously served as head of the Republic of Buryatia. According to him, today there are mainly guest houses on the shores of Baikal, while the tourist flow this year has already amounted to about 1.5 mn people. As a result of the discussions, the decision was made to propose the senator’s amendments for the second reading of this draft law at the State Duma.
At the same time, experts note, a similar situation is on the shores of Lake Baikal in the Irkutsk Region, as well as in a number of neighboring regions. “In the Krasnoyarsk Territory, there are many interesting cities, such as Minusinsk, Yeniseisk, where there are no hotels. The experience shows that many tourists would like to stay not at a hotel, even if there is a hotel in the town, but in guest houses to immerse themselves in the local everyday lifestyle and get to know the local traditions,” said Alexander Uss, the senator from the Krasnoyarsk Territory who was the governor of the Territory until recently.
In general, the senators believe that this law is in demand. Based on the experiment’s results, a balanced document will be finalized and adopted, common to all regions, that will ensure the proper level of licensing and procedure for providing the services.
