St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Krasnodar set standard for hotel infrastructure for business tourists

In the leadup to the Let’s Travel! International Tourism Forum, experts from business programme partner Aeroclub analyzed data on business-related bookings in Russian hotels and user ratings from the TIME business travel booking platform. As businesses become more active in different regions, they have begun to look more and more at whether a place can provide the necessary accommodation, with convenience of location, cleanliness, service, food, and staff all gaining in importance.

According to the study, the best business accommodations could be found in St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Krasnodar, Perm, and Chelyabinsk, where demand and ratings exceeded the national average. The number of nights spent in a hotel in Voronezh in Q1 increased by 39% year-on-year in 2026, with facilities receiving an average rating of 8.81. That number was 8.72 in St. Petersburg, which experienced a moderate 5% decline in the number of nights spent. The numbers for Krasnodar, Perm, and Chelyabinsk were close to those for last year (−2%), with user ratings exceeding the Russian average significantly at 8.56, 8.49, and 8.59, respectively.

“The quality of the hotel where someone stays on a business trip is important to a company because it directly affects how successful the trip is. It’s not the kind of comfort we seek when we are on vacation. If an employee has to spend time on problems with the accommodations, gets bad service, or can’t work in the room, it has a direct impact on the business trip. That’s why user ratings are important – they help companies choose the most appropriate place and provide hotels with feedback that gives them an understanding of how their service is already meeting expectations and where they’re falling short. Our goal is to translate this experience into clear benchmarks for quality and eventually establish a standard for hotels geared towards business travelers,” Managing Director of Aeroclub Yulia Lipatova said.

The term Quality Deficit Zone refers to cities where business traffic is high or in the process of increasing and ratings fall below the national average. In Ufa, for example, the number of nights spent in a hotel increased by 25% while the average rating for facilities was 7.57. In Khabarovsk, the number of nights spent increased by 105%, with an average rating of 8.07. In Svobodny, the number of nights increased by 51%, and the average rating was 7.71. Finally, in Nizhnekamsk, nights spent increased by 10%, and the rating was 7.88.

Potential new hotspots for high-quality business hospitality outside major business hubs can be found in cities where demand is average and user ratings are high. Such were Cheboksary, where the average rating was 9.07, Ryazan, where it was 8.94 and nights spent increased by 13%, Omsk, where the rating was 8.76, Kemerovo, where it was 8.54 with an 18% increase, and Kaliningrad, where it was 8.35 with a 23% increase.

Prepared as part of the Best Hotels for Business Travel Project, the study combines the ratings of business travelers with hotel industry expert assessments to create a new standard for business hospitality in Russia and encompasses more than 15,000 facilities in 1,700 Russian cities.

According to the user ratings in TIME, Russian business travel accommodations scored an average of 8.26 out of 10. Hotels received their highest ratings for location (8.84 points), staff (8.48), service (8.18), and cleanliness (8.17), with food continuing to be the area Russian business hotels need to improve most (the average score was 7.65).

The 2026 Let’s Travel! International Tourism Forum business programme will take place at Moscow’s VDNH from 10 to 12 June and will focus on the important issues facing the development of the modern tourism industry: a tourism product’s need to be competitive, better infrastructure, how to promote the regions, international cooperation, digitalization, human resources, and opportunities for investment. The Let’s Travel International Tourism Forum is being organized by the Roscongress Foundation in conjunction with the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation and with the support of the Government of the Russian Federation.