One of Moscow’s most luxurious hotels, the Ritz-Carlton, with its stunning view of Red Square, was renamed Carlton Moscow on Monday following its parent company, Marriott International, suspended operations in Russia due to the offensive once morest Ukraine.
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Located on Moscow’s central avenue, Tverskaya, and boasting a bird’s eye view of the Kremlin, its gardens and Red Square, the hotel has a new logo and website, but no announcement has been made regarding a financial transaction.
It will operate “as an independent hotel”, according to a statement quoted by Russian news agencies, while until then it was managed by Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, a subsidiary of the Marriott group.
Asked by AFP on Monday, Oksana Leonenko, the acting director of the Carlton Moscow, admitted that the foreign clientele of her establishment, in particular Europeans, has fallen sharply since the sanctions.
“I am sure that if the situation improves, as everyone hopes, the borders will reopen (…) and foreign customers will come back to see us,” she said.
According to her, there are currently no shortages of luxury products offered at the hotel, such as “shampoos in the rooms, cosmetics in the spa, drinks”. But his team is still looking for “other suppliers”, just in case.
In March, hotel giant Marriott closed its offices and froze new projects. Then, on June 3, he announced that he was suspending all his operations on the Russian market, judging it “impossible” to operate because of “the restrictions announced by the United States, the United Kingdom and the EU” in recent months to punish Russia for its assault on Ukraine.
This departure is in addition to those of many other Western giants who have withdrawn from Russia since it attacked its neighbor. Among them, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Nike, Starbucks or Renault.
The effects of the sanctions on Russia are still difficult to assess, but sectors employing hundreds of thousands of Russians are already affected by serious logistical and financial problems.
The Russian authorities, for their part, believe that Russia has withstood the sanctions well and that it is, on the contrary, the European countries, because of their energy dependence on Russia, which will suffer the most economically as a result of their own punitive measures.