Ukrainians offer free accommodation to fans coming for Champions League final

Kyivans offer free accommodation to European football fans amid a shortage of rental space in the capital less than three weeks before the UEFA Champions League final on May 26.

This year, for the first time ever, Ukraine’s capital will be hosting the final matches of the women’s and men’s champions leagues, annual football competitions among Europe’s top-division football clubs.

But as the city expects up to 100,000 visitors to come to the major football event in Europe and as many international brand hotels are already fully booked, fans complain about rip-offs and canceled reservations.

The men’s final between Spanish Real Madrid and English Liverpool will be played at the Olimpiyskiy National Sports Complex in Kyiv on May 26. The women’s final match between German Wolfsburg and French Lyon will take place at the Valeriy Lobanovskyi Dynamo Stadium on May 24.

Rip-offs and cancelations

In anticipation of a large influx of foreign visitors, prices on hotels and rental apartments skyrocketed up to 100 times.

For instance, a classic suite for two in a two-star hotel Holosiivskyi in Kyiv that normally costs Hr 1,350 ($51) per night would cost Hr 75,000 ($2,800) on May 26.

Websites for home rentals like Airbnb also saw a sharp price increase. A one-bedroom apartment on Peremohy Avenue close to the city center has gone from $56 per night to $479.

There have been reports that some short-term rental businesses decided to take advantage of high demand and canceled earlier reservations only to rent their flats for new, exorbitant prices.

Marcos Sanchez from Madrid together with his friends booked a one-bedroom flat with a company called Dayflats on May 2 for four nights. But on the next day they received an unexpected notification that their cancellation had been confirmed.

“They canceled our booking without explanation, returned money, and put 4 times bigger price,” Marcos told the Kyiv Post.

“We didn’t cancel our reservation. Hotels.com, a website through which we booked, has records that it was cancelled by a company,” his friend Maria Garcia-Mella said.

Sanchez and Garcia-Mella are not the only ones. At least five other people reported their early reservations had been canceled by various rental companies.

The company Dayflats replied to the Kyiv Post that “it was an issue of overbooking.”

Free accommodation for fans

Embarrassed by their city’s hotel decisions, regular Kyivans launched Facebook groups offering to host football fans for free.

Simply by posting contacts in English with the hashtag #FreeKyivCouch4Fans Kyivans are trying to change their city’s hospitality image.

“This movement was started by ordinary Kyiv people, who discovered that hotels skyrocketed their prices exactly on the date of the final match,” UkrBall, a community of football fans on Facebook, wrote on its page. “We do not want visitors to remember Kyiv as a capital of hucksters.”

At least three Facebook groups were started to connect Ukrainian hosts offering free accommodation and foreign fans.

One group offers a spreadsheet that lists the hosts ready to accommodate fans for free. Another suggests that fans seeking accommodation leave comments under this post with their details and dates of stay.

A yet another is a closed group of over 3,000 members, “Kyiv Free Couch for Football Fans,” where Ukrainian hosts leave posts offering accommodation and fans are invited to comment on the preferred host’s post.

Some of the fans coming to the game are commenting that they are actually willing to pay for accommodation – just not a sky-rocketing price demanded by the hotels.

Some hosts have preferences for who they would like to accommodate. For example, Kyivan Yuriy Stets writes on Facebook that he can host a family of fans older than 40 years old. He specified that they must be supporting Real Madrid.

Alternatively, Yuriy Dida, a Kyivan who supports Real Madrid’s opponent Liverpool, offers free accommodation for two Liverpool football club fans.

Kyiv Post staff writers Veronika Melkozerova and Bermet Talant contributed to this story.