With Rooms to Grow

If there is any doubt that Moscow has arrived as a high-end tourist destination, just try booking a hotel room. Accommodations in the hotel-starved Russian capital are already going for $1,000 a night—not including breakfast. The number of travelers to Moscow is projected to increase fivefold, up to 5 million, within the next two years. Where will they all stay? Fortunately, the city is undergoing a hotel-building boom. And given the mega-high real estate prices, five-star accommodations seem the only way to go.

Among the newest arrivals, the 11-story Ritz-Carlton offers 334 guest rooms and suites facing Tverskaya Street and Red Square. For $700, waiters will serve a tsar's breakfast—complete with Beluga caviar and champagne—on the terrace overlooking Lenin's Tomb (from $1,400 to $18,000 per night; ritzcarlton.com/en).

The five-star MaMaison Pokrovka Suite Hotel boasts 84 suites done in sleek, 1930s-style décor, with unusually shaped red velvet furniture (from $529 to $3,347 per night for the Chairman Suite; pokrovka-moscow.com). The Ararat Park Hyatt features a contemporary top-floor bar with fabulous views of the Kremlin (from $600 per night to $16,000 for the Presidential Suite; moscow.park.hyatt.com). The Hotel Crown Plaza, a re-branded Intourist hotel, is a behemoth, with 563 rooms in a glass and concrete block near the Moscow River. Once the Mezhdunarodnaya, it hasn't changed much but the rooms are more expensive. Still, this four-star hotel looks like a bargain, with prices ranging from $290 to $1,000 per night (mezhdunarodnaya-moscow-hotel.ru/en/).