Hotel Sputnik Moscow

Posted on December 08, 2011 by Admin
Hotel Sputnik Moscow

Hotel Sputnik Moscow

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I first went to Russia in 1989. It was still the Soviet Union then and during our visit it lived up to our expectations of bureaucracy, low-level menace and Cold War them-and-us paranoia. And for hospitality, for which we were indebted to the Hotel Sputnik, in south-central Moscow.

I can’t describe how it was in 1989 any better than this anonymous reviewer who visited it in 2004. It obviously didn’t change much in those fifteen years.

Sputnik Hotel K +7 (095) 930-2287         http://www.hotelsputnik.ru

Street Address: Building 38, Leninsky Prospect, Moscow, Russia

Location: Fair

Nearest Metro: No metro station anywhere nearby.

Staff Speaks English? Maybe a little.

Would I Stay Here? Yes, but only on the 10th floor.

* Machine Gun Cop At The Front Door *

From the Sputnik’s brochure:

“Sputnik is one of the most comfortable hotels in Moscow.”

(Oh my… excuse me for a moment while I have a good laugh.)

Reality: When I visited, a VERY tough-looking police officer was holding a machine gun and very seriously eyeballing every single person that walked through the front door. Is that something you find at “one of the most comfortable hotels in Moscow?”

Renovation is underway in the lobby. It looks like a fairly nice cafe is about to open there. My room tour began on the 12th floor and I was not at all impressed. The room was clean, but old and tired. The halls were dark. Interesting, distant city views can be had from those upper floors. The bathrooms were okay. But I was not excited.

Then I saw the 10th floor. It had a nice hallway. The carpeted rooms were brand new and fine. The 9th floor was not as impressive, but it was new too. That was it. Everything else I saw was old. And the other floors were darkish. It’s a good way to hide the dirt or other imperfections while saving on the electricity and light bulbs – I guess…

There is a “Gentleman’s Club” on one of the upper floors. My assistant Tatiana thought this hotel was awful. I didn’t think it was that bad. The Sputnik has 343 rooms. Pricing ranges from 1480 to 4420 rubles (as of March 22, 2004).

The VisitMoscow site looks worth preserving. There are some priceless comments on its list of Moscow hotels. (“Arena Hotel – a certain mistake to stay here.”) I shall investigate  further.

The Sputnik has a much more classy image now. The English version of the site suggests they could spend more on translators, but from this picture on its 2011 website, we can see its proud self-image as a gleaming tower of futureworld hospitality.