The situation has improved, even though another three big hotels – Lotte Hotel, Radisson Royal Hotel (Ukraine) and Renaissance Moscow Monarch Centre Hotel – were opened this year.

The best dynamics are shown by the middle class sector (80 percent), while the high and luxury sectors demonstrate a bit slower progress (70-73 and 63 percent correspondingly).

Specialists say that such results are explained by the fact that the latter did not suffer that much from the crisis. Luxury hotels managed to maintain their bookings at the same level by lowering prices. The middle class hotels, therefore, could not stand the competition.

David Jenkins, head of hospitality from Cushman & Wakefield, told RT that the growth in the sector is connected with new economic revival in the new business season. It is no secret that Moscow hotels are booked mostly by businessmen, not holiday-makers.

According to Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, quoted by Lenta.ru on-line newpaper, there were 54 percent businessmen and only 32 percent tourists among the capital’s visitors in 2009. In total, Moscow hotels hosted 3.45 million guests, about one-third of them foreigners. In 2007, before the crisis, the figure amounted to 3.97 million.

Hotel managers confess that such figures were achieved by offering modest prices: the average room in Moscow currently costs 4,000 to 11,800 rubles ($132-390).

Market analysts agree that prices will go up as soon as hotel bookings reach 80 percent. At the same time, they believe that prices will not skyrocket as they did in 2008 when a room could cost up to 18,000 rubles (about $600).

In the next ten years, Moscow authorities plan to double the number of hotels: by 2020, the capital will have 535 hotels with 150,000 rooms.