Problems behind creating hotel services in Russia

Tourism market is considered as one of the most prospect segments of economy in the majorityof countries. Russia also has a great potential for the development of the tourism where the lodging market is the key factor for success. At the moment one of the major problems of national accommodation segment is low quality of hotel service that doesn't satisfy world quality standards. The authors of the manuscript made an analysis of the Russian lodging market that allowed evaluating its current state. Another goal was to identify the factors influencing the problem of disconformity of national hotel services to world quality standards. The following problem factors were found: geographically unbalanced structure of the Russian lodging market, the prevalence of non-classified places of accommodation, outdated hotel rooms, shortage of qualified staff, low presence of hotel chains, as well as additional services/facilities and implemented innovations, and, finally, low availability of hotel services for special tourist categories. The data about Russian market was compared to the data from the US lodging market which applies the best practices in providing hotel services of world quality standards. On the basis of the research made the authors suggested recommendations of solving the identified problems.