When hair stylist Elena returned to Russia from a holiday in Spain with her boyfriend Dmitry, she was reluctant to spend her enforced self-isolation at home with her family.
At the airport in St. Petersburg, she went online to search for places to stay to avoid infecting her relatives with the novel coronavirus. That’s when she discovered local hotels were catering to people in her situation.
“We live with our parents at the moment and they are in the risk zone,” said the 29-year-old from self-isolation with her boyfriend at Smart Welcome Hotel in St. Petersburg. “We looked up ‘self-isolation at St. Petersburg hotels’ and we found this one.”
Occupancy rates at Russian hotels have fallen sharply as Moscow, St. Petersburg and other regions have declared lockdowns. Russia has so far reported 21,102 cases and 170 coronavirus-related deaths.
Some hotels have begun offering self-isolation services to long-term guests to compensate for lost bookings.
Nadezhda Erekhinskaya, manager at Smart Welcome Hotel, said rebranding as a self-isolation destination had been essential to stay in business.
“In order to stay afloat and not to close completely, we decided to offer our guests these kinds of services,” she said. “This is a way for us to at least come out even this month.”
Erekhinskaya said the hotel’s rates were up to three times lower than normal, despite it having to pay for additional cleaning services and special measures for guests not to come into contact with each other.
The hotel charges 10,900 roubles ($145) for two weeks in a standard two-person room, and 16,990 roubles ($225) for a month.
St. Petersburg resident Lyudmila Voronina took her 70-year-old mother and 12-year-old daughter to self-isolate at the Orekh country club outside the city.
“The air is clean,” said Voronina, 41. “I think this is much better than being in an apartment.”
Manager Anastasia Ragozina aid that while some guests had cancelled because of the lockdown in St. Petersburg, others wanted to self-isolate in one of the club’s cottages.
“There are guests who are apparently fleeing the commotion in the city, the dangers that await them in any elevator, on every button,” she said
