FANCY

When you come to a city in a foreign country on a visit, one of the things you have to do right away is to find where you'll stay. Usually there is a wide choice of hotels to pick from, and your choice will depend on how much you are prepared to pay and which location you want. If you are a businessman or a politician you'll want to put up at a hotel, conveniently situated, which will provide good, comfortable accommodation and good service that will take care of all your daily needs. You'll want to be sure that at night when you return to your hotel after a busy and tiring day you'll be able to rest in a cosy and relaxed atmosphere of your temporary home or enjoy yourself at your hotel's restaurant or bar with a lot of dishes and drinks on the menu to satisfy any taste.
Unfortunately up to quite recent times the city of Kyiv could not boast a single hotel that could match Sheratons, Hiltons, Inter-Continentals and other fancy hotels one finds in any Western European capital. With an increasing number of big-time businessmen and politicians coming to Kyiv, this lack of five-star accommodation and service began to be felt more acutely. And at last two hotels are being built in Kyiv which hopefully will rise to the world's standard of five-star hotels.

Two fancy hotels in Kyiv
The Inter-Continental-Kyiv five-star hotel for two hundred guests is going up right in the centre of Kyiv, at the site opposite the ancient St. Sophia Cathedral. Another fancy hotel under construction is situated next door to the Opera House. In fact, the walls of an old hotel built at the end of the 19th century, then one of the best hotels in town, provided the starting point from which a renovation amounting to a complete reconstruction has been launched. The new hotel for 250 rooms is to preserve its old name — Teatralny. Incidentally, there is another major city in Europe where an old hotel is situated close to an Opera House. The city happens to be Paris where 300-years old elegant Le Grand Hotel Inter-Continental overlooks Opera House. Probably in Kyiv such a distinguished neighbourhood with a magnificent Opera House just across the road will be an additional lure for guests to choose the Teatralny to stay in.
The general contractor for building the Inter-Continental-Kyiv is the Ay-Sel Turkish Company and the Teatralny has gone to an Ukrainian company to build but the interior decoration, design and hotel equipment will be dealt with by foreign companies whose reputation stands high in the world of hotel business.

NIGMA behind the projects
There is a sort of mastermind that stands behind these two projects. It is the NIGMA Construction LLC which initiated them in the first place and developed them to bring them to the final stages.
The construction of a top-class hotel in any country involves a lot of logistics, technical and legal problems. A developer of a major hotel-construction project has to solve many other problems as well. Costs of construction must be estimated, potential investors must be made interested enough, they must be convinced that the project will be a profitable undertaking; legality of all the property, financial and building operations must be ascertained; a major bank, financing the project, must be provided with assurances that the risks taken are minimal, plus a lot more is to be done before the project is finally launched.
NIGMA was among the first Ukrainian companies to go into developing hotel-building projects. NIGMA invited leading Ukrainian experts of all kinds — architects (from S. Babushkin Architecture Bureau), designers, project developers (from Kyivproekt Project Institute), engineers, builders (Joint-Stock Kievgorstroy Company), managers (General Directorate of Foreign Representations) who were instrumental in starting the process rolling. NIGMA's success to a great extent is determined by a wide experience it has gained working in Ukraine under conditions of new economic relations that are only being formed. NIGMA knows best how to deal with situations arising from imperfect legislation, developing market mechanisms, inadequate financial regulations and a powerful bureaucratic apparatus with its enormous amount of red tape.
According to Valery Mishchenko, the NIGMA President, Ukraine is still terra incognita for many potential foreign investors. They do not know the peculiarities of the local market and that is why they are not in a hurry to invest, waiting for the moment when the financial market of Ukraine will become stable and reliable enough. When they do come to Ukraine and think that the principles of operation they are accustomed to will operate in this country as well as they do in their native land, one should not expect great successes. That is why the future belongs to the combined efforts of Ukrainian companies which know well the local conditions and foreign investors who are interested in entering new markets. Those who are prepared to make considerable capital investments into major projects to be launched in Ukraine, will face difficulties quite unfamiliar to them, but at the same time they can gain a lot too.
Teatralny and Inter-Continental offer
Both new hotels are situated in the central part of the town rich in historical and architectural landmarks. But like any other downtown area it is here that the offices of the governmental bodies and biggest and most important companies, shopping molls and fancy stores are to be found. The new hotels are advantageously located in close proximity to everything that is most important in Kyiv both from the business and cultural point of view. Both hotels will offer their guests comfortable, superbly designed suites, restaurants serving excellent food, sophisticated communications systems, VIP service.
At the end of the century and of the millennium Kyiv at long last has begun to acquire features of a truly European capital.

By Andriy Shestakov
Joint Venture Teatralny Hotel
7, Leontovycha St., office 2,
Kyiv, 252030, Ukraine
Tel./fax: 380 (44) 244-1899, 225-4258, 224-0422, 224-0948