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Moscow hotels in the center: why we removed all collections
Editorial Position
Updated:8 min1,603 words

Moscow hotels in the center: why we removed all collections

Here there were seven collections of hotels in central Moscow: budget, mini-hotels, capsule, four and five stars, and separately accommodation near the main square. All seven have been deleted in every language version of the site.

This kind of material is not a description of the city, but a monetary recommendation: it compares offers and steers the reader toward a choice. That is exactly the function the European Union banned outright, listing among the covered services not only the work of travel agencies but also advertising of such services. From January 1, 2026, there are no more exceptions, and an EU publisher cannot publish such a list.

💡 At a glance:

  • which seven collections were deleted and how they differed from one another
  • which specific rule bans not the sale, but the advertising
  • where the money spent by a guest actually goes
  • which Central European cities remain in our live sections
  • Last updated: 09/2026

Why we deleted these guides

The seven articles covered the entire price range at once. Budget hotels and capsule rooms for those counting their money, mini-hotels for those who want quiet, four and five stars for those who want a view from the window, and a separate list for those looking for a place to sleep a stone's throw from the main square. Together they covered every possible query, and that is precisely why they could not be trimmed or rewritten: removing an offer from a collection means removing the collection.

We count from February 24, 2022, when Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Between that date and September 2026, our hotel lists continued to function as a commercial offer, and that was an editorial mistake, not a technical delay.

What exactly is banned: not the sale, but the advertising

The precise rule matters because it is usually retold incorrectly. Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2033 of October 23, 2025 replaced paragraph 2 of Article 5n of Regulation 833/2014 with a direct ban on providing services directly related to tourist activities in Russia (EUR-Lex). The transition period for contracts concluded before October 24, 2025 ended on January 1, 2026, and after that date no exceptions remained (Skadden, 11.2025).

The list of covered services includes services of travel agencies and tour operators, services of tour guides, and advertising services related to them (Skadden, 11.2025). The ban also extends to online platforms and apps that allow booking and selling tickets, and to visa facilitation when it is linked to tourism (Fieldfisher).

The word "advertising" is key here. We did not sell rooms and did not receive commissions; we published lists. But a list of fifteen hotels with star ratings and distance to the center is, by its function, closer to advertising a service than to describing a city. We make this judgment about ourselves, not about others.

The stated purpose of the rule is worded just as directly and also concerns money: to reduce the revenue Russia receives from such services and to curb the promotion of non-essential travel and leisure in the country (Skadden, 11.2025). In other words, the EU legislator explicitly named tourism as a source of state revenue.

Where the guest's money goes

The common version about oil and gas needs correcting, otherwise the argument falls apart at the first check. The share of oil and gas revenues in Russia's federal budget fell to roughly 22 percent in 2025 and 2026, down from 42 percent in 2022 (OSW Centre for Eastern Studies, 12.09.2025). That means the claim "vacation money pays for oil rent" is wrong.

The opposite is true. The share of non-oil-and-gas revenues has grown to roughly 78 percent, and the hotel business pays VAT and profit tax, meaning it feeds exactly that part of the budget. A foreign guest's spending lands where the weight for the state is now higher than before the war.

A market fact is also worth naming. Organized tourism to Russia fell by roughly 90 percent back in 2022 (according to Fox News, 2022). A hotel collection for an audience that is barely present in the city had, by 2026, stopped being a reference and become a monument to its own genre.

What this means for you as a reader in the EU and the US

Item

Status 09/2026

Source

Services related to tourism in Russia

Prohibited by Article 5n(2) of Regulation 833/2014 as amended by Regulation 2025/2033

EUR-Lex

What the list includes

Travel agency and tour operator services, guide services, and advertising of these services

Skadden, 11.2025

Online platforms and ticket sales

Covered by the ban on the same basis as agency services

Fieldfisher

Transition period

Ended 01.01.2026

Skadden, 11.2025

Paying with an EU-issued card

Impossible since 10.03.2022

The Moscow Times

German Foreign Office recommendation

"Vor Reisen in die Russische Föderation wird gewarnt"

Auswärtiges Amt

A separate note on payment, because this is the most practical point of all. Visa and Mastercard announced the suspension of operations in Russia on March 5, 2022, and cards issued outside the country stopped working there (The Moscow Times, 06.03.2022). The German Foreign Office confirms this in its current guidance (Auswärtiges Amt). We do not write about how to get around this restriction, and we will not.

Where to go instead

The query was about a good hotel in the historic center, breakfast, and a short flight. The live sections of the site answer this: the general section on where to stay, the Czech Republic with Prague, Poland with Krakow and Warsaw, Austria with Vienna, as well as Hungary and Germany. For those looking for an imperial center with large squares and palaces, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest are the closest matches.

The editorial team's overall explanation for the entire section is collected in the section hub. Related texts: our position on spa hotels and pools and our position on country hotels in the Moscow region.

Where we stand

We believe that a hotel roundup is an advertising genre regardless of whether it contains affiliate links or whether the editorial team receives anything at all. In our assessment, publishing such material about the capital of a state waging war against a neighboring country means helping sell that trip as ordinary. That is why we decided to remove all seven roundups and not publish updated versions.

We also do not name any hotel from the previous lists. A named hotel in an explanatory text still reads as a recommendation, and we will not circumvent our own decision that way.

We write about the state and its policies, not about people based on their passport. There are people in Russia who spoke out against the war and received prison sentences for it. Our decision not to publish travel guides to Russia concerns money, sanctions, and reader safety, not nationality.

Publication date: September 3, 2026. Last updated: September 3, 2026.

⁉️🤔 Frequently asked questions

You didn't have affiliate links, so why is this advertising?

Because an advertising function is defined not by payment, but by what the text does. Our roundups compared offers, rated them by stars and distance, and led readers toward a choice. The analyses of the nineteenth sanctions package classify both advertising related to tourism activities and our former genre as covered services, and our old format is closer to that list than to a city description.

What if someone is going anyway? Isn't a list more useful than silence?

We are not silent: the legal framework and official warnings are laid out above, and that is the information we can provide responsibly. Practical advice about traveling appears in none of the texts in this section, by an explicit editorial decision.

Were the budget and capsule hotels also removed?

Yes, all seven articles. The price of a night's stay changes neither the rule nor the fact that paying for it with a card from Germany is impossible there.

Why didn't you leave the texts in the archive with a warning?

An archived page still shows up in search and continues to answer the same query. The reader would get the old list plus a fine-print disclaimer, which is exactly what we are refusing to do. Redirecting to an explanation is more honest.

Will you bring these roundups back?

We don't make promises with dates. The decision will be revisited when the grounds for it change. Those grounds are the sanctions rule, the structure of budget revenue, and the conditions for an EU-based reader described above.

In short

Seven hotel roundups in central Moscow have been removed in full, from capsule rooms to five stars. Our argument about money is built not on oil and gas, but on the budget structure, where the share of non-oil-and-gas revenue has grown to roughly 78 percent. The Central European cities we continue to cover are listed above.

How you can help

We are not collecting money and we receive nothing from the links below. These are official websites of organizations working with the consequences of the war:

Sources

Link check date: 09.03.2026.

tourism.com.de Editorial Team
tourism.com.de Editorial TeamTravel editorial team: research, fact-checking, updates→ All publications

A small editorial team writing guides for independent travel. We travel ourselves, but we haven’t been everywhere, so we check prices, opening hours and how to get there against official sources.