Moscow Hotels Remain the World's Most Expensive



Hotel Metropol, Moscow

 The Telegraph: The average Moscow room rate from January to June this year cost £261 ($423), compared to £228 ($370) in Geneva and £220 ($357) in Zurich.

The Russian capital is also home to the world's wealthiest expats, with over a third of them earning in excess of £160,000 ($259,486) per annum.

Of the 50 cities surveyed by international corporate services company Hogg Robinson Group (HRG), 33 reported a four per cent year on year increase in hotel rates, with particularly strong growth in Asia.

The boom in hotel development and the flourishing financial centres of Hong Kong and Singapore are believed to be behind the seven per cent rise.

At £196 ($318) per night, Istanbul achieved the highest overall increase in hotel rate of 37 per cent, due to the growing interest in the city as a business destination coupled with an inclination among business travellers, conscious of Istanbul's security issues, to stay in five-star accommodation.

Margaret Bowler, director of global hotel relations at HRG, said “The shift from Europe to Asia in hotel rate growth is significant in that it demonstrates changing business priorities. The rates demonstrate that demand has increased for travel to emerging regions as a result of the need to do business and that travellers are willing to pay higher hotel costs during their stay."

Cardiff, Glasgow and Liverpool offered the cheapest rates of approximately £80 ($130) per night, despite the boost from the January VAT increase. The weakest performing region was Eastern Europe. It suffered a 6.6 per cent decrease which could have been worse had it not been for Bucharest and Kiev reporting a four per cent rate increase.

Other notable decreases were in Middle Eastern countries such as Abu Dhabi (minus 15 per cent) and Dubai (minus seven per cent), where hotel supply outstripped demand.

Ms Bowler added: "Key international cities like London, New York and Paris reported hotel rate increases, demonstrating buoyancy and resilience. London, in particular, is expected to flourish next year as it hosts the Olympics.

“Overall, our research shows that global hotel rates are increasing and have been exhibiting signs of growth. Looking ahead, we anticipate that hotel rates will continue to rise if the economy improves.”

TSA Update

Jaunted: Apparently it's "Please Don't Do That" week in the world of airline and airport security. We had that post earlier about the drunk douchebag who tried to push around flight attendants so they'd give him more alcohol, which went about how you'd expect. On Monday the TSA blog has its own post about trying to bring weird and exotic pets through airport scanners, which doesn't work since full-body scanners can detect living turtles and snakes (who knew, right?)

We're even more interested in a TSA post from earlier this month, about a graduate student who tried to get a science project through airport security at OMA. The gadget was a home-built device that measured blood oxygen content, which is admittedly kind of neat. It also had the secondary characteristic of looking exactly like a bomb. That part is less neat.

TSA workers of course immediately shut down the screening area and called in a bomb squad. TSA officials later defended that decision because - hey - that thing really does strikingly resemble a bomb. Our instinct is to criticize the agency whenever it de facto shuts down airports over false alarms, but we kind of see their argument here. We especially appreciate their broader, blogged point: don't bring bomb-looking things into airports. Come on folks.

In other TSA news from the last couple of months, an LAX worker is under investigation for stealing watches and debit cards, a Fort Lauderdale screener got caught stuffing stolen iPads down his pants, and the agency itself recently announced that as many as 900,000 of their security badges may be compromised.

So naturally the TSA union is focused on making sure that TSA supervisors get to use their government credit cards to buy workers bottled water. Because they've got their priorities straight, that union.