Floating hotels converted from old barges and boats will appear near on the Moscow River's embankments in the next few years, a Moscow government official said on Wednesday.
"We have many free embankments and it is not difficult to connect the boats to electricity and other utility lines. We are planning to make over 50 such hotels. Even if every hotel has a 100 rooms, the overall amount will be more than 5,000 rooms," Konstantin Timofeyev, head of the Moscow government committee for construction development told RIA Novosti.
Timofeyev expects to see first such hotels this year.
Moscow is very short of hotel space, and has only 30 percent of the capacity it needs. Timofeyev says Moscow needed 300,000 hotel rooms.
The city has the highest occupancy rates and highest room rates in Europe.
