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- Guaranteed room: escrow accounts for the construction of hotels may be introduced in the Russian Federation
Guaranteed room: escrow accounts for the construction of hotels may be introduced in the Russian Federation
In Russia, escrow accounts will be used in the construction of hotels, Izvestia found out. Banks will act as guarantors of the completion of tourism projects, similar to the mechanism that is already used in the construction of new residential buildings. The measure was discussed at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin. Earlier, the Accounting Chamber revealed that the construction of the Arkhyz resort had doubled in price and proposed to increase the transparency of financing ecotourism and the hotel business. How the innovation can affect the tourism industry is described in the Izvestia article.
What changes can the construction expect?
In Russia, they may introduce a mechanism to protect investors in the construction of hotels — we are talking about using escrow accounts. The expediency of using such a tool, as well as project financing, was discussed at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin. This follows from the minutes of the April 21 meeting, which was reviewed by Izvestia.
The escrow account mechanism implies that credit institutions act as guarantors of the completion of the project. Currently, this scheme is used in the construction of new residential buildings: the developer gets access to funds only after the facility is put into operation. Izvestia sent inquiries to the office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Ministry of Construction and the Ministry of Energy, as well as to banks and hotel developers.
— The expansion of project financing mechanisms and escrow accounts to this sector can be an important incentive for the development of tourism infrastructure in the Russian Federation. This approach will attract private capital to the industry, as investments in the construction of hotels will become more understandable and secure for citizens. This is especially true in conditions of limited bank lending," Kristina Gudym, an analyst at Finam Financial Group, told Izvestia.
The additional inflow of funds will help accelerate the construction of modern three-star hotels and above, which will reduce the shortage of high-quality rooms in regions with a growing tourist flow, the expert added. In addition, the mandatory involvement of professional hotel operators will raise the standards of service.
There are different types of tour accommodation facilities: collective (hotels, sanatoriums) and individual (apartments, cottages). As a source in government agencies explained to Izvestia, regulation of investment activities in the tourism industry may also affect apartments and dormitories for hotel employees, but specific solutions are still being developed by relevant departments.
— Some real estate investors are reorienting from buying apartments to purchasing rooms and service apartments managed by operators. The rental apartment market is oversaturated, profitability has fallen to 2-4% per annum, while a hotel room managed by a network operator still promises up to 12% per annum, and in resort projects — up to 17-18%. Therefore, the issue of protecting the money that developers receive is acute," Dmitry Tortev, a member of the expert council of the State Duma Committee for the Protection of Competition, told Izvestia.
Today, the law on shared—equity construction does not apply to hotels - if a developer goes bankrupt, the buyer of such an area will become a creditor of the fourth stage, that is, he will actually lose everything, the expert said.
— It is this gap, apparently, that the escrow mechanism is designed to close, which has been operating in housing construction since 2019 and, in general, has so far saved the market from the massive appearance of new defrauded shareholders, — he said.
In addition, given the difficult economic situation in the country, protecting the interests of investors is an urgent measure for the successful implementation of major tourism projects, when the authorities seek to avoid unjustified price increases and ensure transparency of spending, Dmitry Tortev added.
Izvestia wrote that the Accounting Chamber revealed a double increase in the cost of building the Arkhyz resort from 15.4 to 31.2 billion rubles. The head of the joint venture, Boris Kovalchuk, informed Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin about this, suggesting increasing the transparency of financing the tourism industry. In particular, the supreme audit Institution recommended that the Cabinet of Ministers fix in legislation the requirements for the size of a bank guarantee when concluding concession agreements.
What are the prospects of the Russian tourism industry
The use of project financing and escrow accounts in hotel projects can become an effective tool for the industry, Alexander Biba, President of Cosmos Hotel Group, told Izvestia.
— Such a mechanism can reduce risks for private investors, make the structure of projects more understandable, including for banks, and simplify the attraction of financing for new facilities. For the market, this is primarily an opportunity to accelerate the launch of a high-quality room stock, which remains in short supply in many regions. No less important is the issue of trust on the part of private investors: the more transparent the conditions for entry into a project, the higher the willingness to invest in such facilities. At the same time, this increases the requirements for the projects themselves — their concepts, hotel classification and management quality," he said.
The key question is how this mechanism will be implemented in practice: it is important for the industry that the new rules take into account the specifics of such facilities, a longer investment cycle and payback periods, said Alexander Biba. First of all, such a format may be in demand in resort hotels, city hotels, apartment hotels and multifunctional tourist complexes, he noted.
The tourism industry is one of the important and promising areas of the Russian economy, which is under special government control and can become a driver for the development of our country's regions, Alexander Zakondyrin, director of the Unified Scientific Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the VNII Ekologiya Federal State Budgetary Institution, told Izvestia.
In particular, due to the reorientation from external to internal tourism, the tourist flow in the country has grown significantly, and a number of major projects are planned to be launched in the regions, the expert noted. For example, by 2030, on behalf of President Vladimir Putin, modern infrastructure for eco-tourism should be created in all national parks of the country.
In these circumstances, the development and implementation of new management tools and investment attraction in the Russian tourism industry can only be welcomed, Alexander Zakondyrin added.
Earlier, Vladimir Putin called the development of domestic tourism one of the priorities of the long-term strategy. According to the head of state, by 2030 the number of trips around the country with hotel accommodation should grow to 140 million. At the same time, as Ilya Umansky, president of the Russian Union of Travel Industry, reported, in 2025 the number of tourist trips in Russia amounted to about 97 million. Also in early 2025, the head of state instructed the Cabinet of Ministers, together with the commissions of the State Council of the Russian Federation, to improve the organization of ecological tourism in protected areas - an approved list of instructions following a meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects.
At the same time, construction, especially civilian construction, is going through difficult times — loans are expensive, investments are falling, said economist Dmitry Prokofiev.
"Escrow is an attempt to give a private investor the same guarantees as an equity investor in new buildings," the expert said.
However, unlike housing, where a person buys an apartment for himself, in hotels the investor purchases a room, which is then leased to a professional operator: this is an investment structure with risk distribution between the developer, the management company and the bank, the specialist added.
It should be understood that an investor who buys a room receives an asset, the profitability of which depends on dozens of factors — the competence of the operator, seasonality, competition, and the state of the tourist flow, Dmitry Tortev agrees. Transferring money to the developer upon the commissioning of the building does not guarantee that the business will be successful — escrow protects against unfinished construction, but not from bankruptcy of the hotel operator or falling occupancy, he added.
According to Dmitry Prokofiev, the main problem of this business today is not a lack of investors, but a lack of understanding of whether there will be stable demand for new hotels and how quickly investments can be recouped.
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