FGC Hotel

History

2025: FGC construction group transferred FGC Hotel to its CEO and left the hotel business

Ninety percent of the shares in FGC Hotel LLC at the end of January 2025 were transferred to the company's general director Alexander Darkin. The FGC group of companies and its owner Vladimir Voronin completely left the hotel business, follows from the SPARK data.

According to Kommersant, the FGC Hotel company was created in 2022 to analyze the sites for the construction of hotels and support projects before their opening, but during its operation it did not receive a single facility.

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Фото: Freepik

Initially, it was planned that the company would operate the Four Points by Sheraton Kaluga hotel, built by FSK Group of Companies, but in the summer of 2024 the facility came under the control of Alexander Klyachin's Azimut Hotels chain, becoming the first joint project between the two companies.

Vadim Prasov, Vice President of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers of Russia, emphasizes significant differences between the hotel market and housing construction that require a special approach to business management and development.

According to the analytical company Nikoliers, in Moscow in the period 2019-2024, no more than 782 hotel rooms were introduced annually, which is significantly lower than in 2015-2018, when the entry was 0.9-1.9 thousand rooms. The forecast for 2025 assumes a further decrease to 690 numbers.

CMWP partner Marina Smirnova notes that to achieve the planned revenue of ₽1 billion, the company needed to manage a portfolio of 1.7 thousand rooms or 5-6 hotels, the formation of which could take up to 15 years.

Managing partner IFK Hotel Management Marcel Izmaylov points to a long return on investment in the hospitality business. Mikael Ghazaryan, head of capital markets and investment at IBC Real Estate, adds that the industry is facing a shortage of personnel and low margins.^[1]

2022: Establishing a company

On December 22, 2022, it became known that the FGC construction group had created a new company, would manage hotels and apartments, as well as the development of hotel services at its own and third-party facilities in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities. The established structure was called "FSK Hotel."

According to the Kommersant newspaper, FGC plans to create hotel brands of three, four and five stars, as well as provide a franchise for third parties who launch or already have a hotel business. The company is ready to look for tenants of apartments, conduct an audit of hotels under construction and ready-made hotels and apart-complexes, as well as accompany construction. The developer's investments in the development of a new business were not disclosed.

FGC has created a company to manage hotels

The issue of selling the franchise to a new player, according to the founder of Ivashkevich Hospitality Stanislav Ivashkevich, "sounds inappropriate." As a rule, in the hotel market, partner programs are launched by very experienced players who have been developing businesses for decades and own a strong brand, he added in a conversation with the publication. The high threshold for entering this business makes the sale of the franchise more of a piece, and you should not expect rapid development, said Franshiza.ru expert Anna Rozhdestvenskaya.

In addition, apart-hotels are a new product for the Russian market, which can create high expectations for the profitability of the product among investors and management companies, indicates Marina Usenko, partner at Commonwealth Partnership. Unlike real estate management in residential complexes, the hotel business, where rooms and services are sold daily, and the number of tariffs for various types of clients is at least a dozen, is more complicated and requires professional skills when working with operating expenses, the expert notes.^[2]

Notes