Maybe not, we’ve seen equally appalling hotels elsewhere, but there is something about the sheer size of the Rin Grand Hotel in southern Bucharest that makes it just appallingly ugly.
Claiming to be the largest hotel in Europe this place opened in the spring to much fanfare. The compliant Romanian media did its job, playing on the fact that the hotel was Europe’s largest and not mentioning that the hotel was a long, long way from Bucharest city centre.
Where is it in fact? Vitan-Barzesti. Views from the windows include the second hand car auction house, Autovit, where half the city comes to sell its car on a Sunday morning, and Lacul Vacaresti: a long abandoned artificial lake.
Anyway, a story in Evenimentul Zilei this morning tells us that the hotel is in fact operating without the correct paperwork, and that the four stars it claims were not awarded by anyone apart from the hotel’s optimistic owners.
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Oh and about the whores, I know this guy who works in Crowne Plaza as a luggage carrier or something and he told me the whores have an arrangement with the hotel staff and the hotel staff allows them to stay in the hotel and pick clients and they split their earnings
China is going to need casinos now and 100 years from now because they’re banned
They banned casinos even in Hong Kong, I had one student from Hong Kong and I asked him if he ever played roulette and he asked me what’s that… he wasn’t very young, he was 33! Only Macau has casinos from all territories which depend on China.
I would build a casino resort in Bucharest, with whores too, I love casinos, my heart starts beating when I see the roulette table, thee feeling is just so irresistible! And I bet I’m not the only one feeling like that.
In the end, if you don’t do what you like where’s the fun?! If I had money and I had to choose between an office building and a casino resort, I would definetly go for the casino resort. And build it as I like it; when you do what you like to do there’s no way you can fail. You fail when you do what others tell you to do.
Sorry, missed your (main) question: I would not build a casino / resort – hotel in Bucharest. In the current situation, not even near Muscat or Dubai (maybe China would be a better location for the coming years). I would rather bet on tourists that come for leisure, people that come for whores and cheap (still) beer, respectively business. The location? It had better be as close to the centre as possible, or near some subway station, for people started avoiding road transfers. If not, I would invest in Iasi, Targu Mures or even Timisoara, cities that still need hotels to be built, have straight outbound flights and have tourist sights, business perspective and more. But, whatever you do, do not bet on whores alone. For competition is tight and the mafia is rifle there.
Most of the stats’ “casinos” in Bucharest (with exceptions, of course) are just spaces where one has slot machines. That is far from the Las Vegas concept. Large hotels (such as the HoJo, the Pullman-to be, actual Sofitel a.o.) have their own casino. The Rin Grand Hotel has its own casino (haven’t visited it, cannot comment there): http://www.rinhotels.ro/rin-grand-hotel/facilitati.html
This ain’t no Las Vegas.
But let us face it, you studied at ASE for years, I did my master’s there: they do not need to roam around about a big casino, they bet on the cheap (for a Bucharest 4* hotel) and many rooms they have. This goes pretty well for business travel and some tourism. According to them, they got about 33% occupation in the first months. Not bad for such a big property and for that location (even though the rentability threshold for hotels is at 70%, but one cannot get that in the first operational year). As for Romanian whores, they can be found in any hotel in this city. And in many other cities in Europe for that matter.
But when you build a hotel in Bucharest, do not rely on a single feature (whores / casino / fusion restaurant / conference package). For next year (if such a crisis occurs) you might need to refurbish the building to accommodate something else. So better bet on more than one card, it is safer, especially when you have 1000+ rooms to fill every night
@Bucharestian: you’re probably right, I have no expertise in business travel and I don’t know too much about the profile of Bucharest among travel destinations. Personally I had the impression that 90% of foreigners who drop here are looking for whores. One Italian guy cleared the subject for me: “Romanian whores are working in Europe, if we wanted whores we would have stayed home”.
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But if I were a developer, I would have built a casino resort that would have included a hotel or only a hotel around some tourist attraction
You can’t tell me there wasn’t enough space to build a casino + a hotel instead of a box with 1000 rooms!
@ Parmalat: you have forgotten one: business travel does not need to be accommodated either near airports or in tourist centres. Exhibitors that go to Romexpo need not stay in Revolutiei Square. We are talking about a city where the demand during the week days (except for July, August, December and January) is often higher than the offer. And the more central one wants to be (in terms of business hotels: Hilton, IC, SAS, HoJo, Novotel a.o.) the higher the price is regardless of the stars sometimes (the Novotel often is the most expensive of the bunch). So those the management of do not agree to pay EUR 200+ / SGL BB / night, send their staff to places such as Phoenicia and Grand Rin for the low rates (if compared to the others). This is about demand and offer, respectively about money, and not about what is nice or convenient tourist-wise. At this moment, Bucharest is not a tourist destination per se, but rather a business travel one. Most of the tourists in town stay here at the beginning / end of their tour in Romania and stay in average or even low end hotels (often far from the city centre for the same reason: the price). Given the Austrian Airways, AlItalia, Lufthansa, Tarom etc. and low cost bunch’s flights from other cities in Romania straight abroad, many people do not even come to Bucharest any more: it is expensive and it has a bad reputation (the “nothing to see” added to the stray dogs, bad traffic and “stupid Southerners” cliches you will hear about in Transylvania for instance). Take a comparison: an average 4* hotel in Bucharest goes at about EUR 150-200 (SGL / night on BB basis), while a tourist-targeted 3* centrally located one goes up to EUR 100-130. Elsewhere (except for the seaside in summer), it is about EUR 70-90 / SGL BB 4* or as low as EUR 50 / SGL BB 3*. In such a context, you can believe me or not, but people prefer either not to go somewhere at all, or they do not mind staying at Confort 3* (the one in Otopeni Town) or at Elizeu 3* (the one near Gara de Nord) and visit the city by bus. This is the market and it has nothing to do with our dreams / desires / emotions.
In order to change something there, we need more hotels (even if not in the very centre, where costs are very high and this brings prices up too) that will compete hard and bring the prices down. For, at this moment, the market is not “normal” (whatever that stands for), when, upon opening, the SAS told me that their policy is to go EUR 10 per room above the Hilton price. In a stabilized market, they would have gone at least EUR 10 less than the competition to enter the market.
Yea, lake Vacaresti view is fantastic for sure. Personally I would never build a hotel by itself. When I was in university (ASE, by the way) I threatened some teacher once that I’m gonna bring in investors and turn the whole university into a casino + a hotel. So in my opinion a hotel only has to exist to serve the purpose of enjoying other benefits around it’s area.
It could be either a hotel near the airport or a hotel near the center of the city or a hotel near some tourist attraction (like Disneyland in Paris), otherwise I don’t see it’s purpose.
And since I remembered Disneyland, did you notice there are no places where people can have fun in this city? Sure, there are night clubs and casinos but not everyone enjoys losing nights in clubs or casinos and for these people the city is no fun.
Also Bucharest seems to be the capital city with the most casinos in Europe; correct me if I’m wrong but throughout Europe casinos are placed outside big cities so that when you go to buy cigars you wouldn’t be tempted to play some roulette too.
Well, Moscow’s Rossiya was “slightly” larger than that (it is currently closed for renovation): http://www.hotelrossia.ru/eng/comm.html. As for its looks, monsters are never charming. And terms like “best / poorest / most luxurious / ugliest / worst” are widely used in the accommodation industry in this world, hence their little practical relevance. Let us go for facts: the hotel was built where they found the huge space they needed for it. In the city centre, this could not have been developed except for a single location: the 10.7 ha. plot on Unirea Ave. meant for the nowadays disputed EUR 800 mil. Esplanada project, unlikely to happen especially given the current crisis. Now, I am not taking Negoita Brothers’ side (and I would never be happy to have people sit on a bus for 1 or 2 hours during the everlasting Bucharest rush hour, traveling between the Rin Grand and, say, the Royal Palace or ROMEXPO Fairgrounds. However the more large hotels are being developed (and the deeper this crisis goes, reducing business travel, the main source for Bucharest’s hotels), the sooner prices will go down and we shall be able to promote the town for the incentive, cultural and other forms of travel. As for large hotels (not huge like this one) are a problem throughout the country, with only a handful of cities being able to host big events. And airports able to handle an 320/1 or 757/767 are scarce in this country. For instance, in TGM we would have had to bring two small KRP arrows which blow the budget; only TSR would have been an option, but – ahem – it lacks the right large hotels; OTP is much handier. So, the bottom line: let them get big, only do not allow them to run without the right papers and have that chief architect in the City Hall wirk for a change and not approve all UFO-shaped buildings.
Back to the Rin Grand, yes, they should build that second fire escape staircase, get the right papers and only then run their business. And a RON 4000 penalty charge is hilarious. As for the Ministry for Small and Average Business, Trade, Tourism and Liberal Professions, I shall not go into details.
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