You're reading: Kyiv’s top hotels raise prices in hopes of capitalizing on Eurovision tourists

It’s a law of economics that if demand rises while supply remains the same, prices will go up.

And while the Eurovision Song Contest, with its expected inflow of tourists, comes to the capital only in May, the law of supply and demand is already effecting the prices of hotel rooms in Kyiv: many have doubled rates for the period of the event – May 9–13.

At the five-star Premier Palace hotel in central Kyiv, for instance, the price of a night in a standard room is currently around $170. That rises to $333 for the five-day period of the contest, and then drops down to $187 afterwards, according to the hotel’s online booking system.

Some 20,000 people are expected to come to Kyiv for Eurovision, but not all of them are expected to book rooms in the capital’s swankiest hotels. And Oleksiy Reznikov, the deputy head of Kyiv City State Administration, believes that even with the increased demand, there’s no shortage of supply, and thus no justification for hotels to jack up prices.

“In the three- to five-star hotels alone there are 19,300 rooms for the guests,” Reznikov told the Kyiv Post. “This number doesn’t include hostels and hotels with lower ratings.”

The Kyiv City Council in February even called a meeting with representatives of the hotel business in the capital to try to persuade them there was no need to raise prices during Eurovision. According to the council, the hotel representatives promised to set “economically justified rates” for the period of the contest.

All the same, most of the hotels whose representatives attended the meeting with Kyiv City Council went on to set higher rates for the period of the concert anyway. The hotels that have increased rates include, as well as the Premier Palace, the Alfavito, Fairmont, Hyatt, InterContinental, 11 Mirrors Design Hotel, Khreschatyk, Holiday Inn Kiev, the Radisson Blu, and the Royal Deluxe.

Apart from raising their prices, Premier Palace and 11 Mirrors Design Hotel are also taking a minimum booking of two nights for the period of the contest. The head of the bookings department at Premier Palace, Sergiy Varchenko, said this booking and price policy would do no harm to Ukraine’s image as a hospitable country.

“For this period there’s high demand, so we’d prefer guests that want to stay for more than one night,” he said.
The only two top hotels not to increase prices for the period of the contest are the Hilton Kyiv and the President Hotel. Kristina Vasylkova, the marketing manager of the Hilton Kyiv, said Eurovision is a great chance for Ukraine to attract potential tourists and build a foundation for

Vasylkova, the marketing manager of the Hilton Kyiv, said Eurovision is a great chance for Ukraine to attract potential tourists and build a foundation for long-term relationship with them.

“We want Kyiv to become a popular tourist city,” she told the Kyiv Post.

But most of the other top Kyiv hotels, it seems, are content to let economics laws work in their favor.