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Sochi hotels by the sea: why we removed all the lists
Editorial Position
Updated:8 min1,675 words

Sochi hotels by the sea: why we removed all the lists

Here there used to be seven hotel roundups for Sochi: first line, sea view, hotels near the beach, hotels in the center, options with meals. All seven have been deleted. Together they collected more than a thousand internal links and were the largest money-making block of our Russia section.

The answer to the reader's original question is simple and unpleasant: we will no longer have a roundup like this. Starting January 1, 2026, a person from the European Union cannot provide or advertise services directly related to tourism activities in Russia, and a list of hotels with descriptions of what makes them good is exactly that kind of advertising. There are no hotel names, categories, or prices in this text.

💡 At a glance:

  • which seven types of roundups were deleted and why none of them could be kept
  • what exactly EU law prohibits and from what date
  • why paying at these hotels with a German card is impossible anyway
  • which seaside destinations remain in the live sections of the site
  • Last updated: 09/2026

Why we deleted these guides

A hotel roundup is the most commercial genre in all of travel media. It does not describe a place, it pushes toward a transaction: compare, choose, book. That is exactly why it was impossible to keep it with a disclaimer at the top of the text.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. Our roundups, written before that date, continued to live on the site and continued to work as a commercial offer. We consider this a mistake that should have been corrected earlier, and we corrected it completely: seven articles have been deleted, and the old URLs in all language versions now redirect here.

The money side looks like this. The share of oil and gas revenue in Russia's budget fell to roughly 22 percent in 2025 and 2026, while the share of non-oil-and-gas revenue rose to roughly 78 percent (Centre for Eastern Studies OSW, 09.12.2025). The hotel levy, VAT, and profit tax from the hotel business fall into the second category. The claim that "tourist money goes to oil" is wrong, while the claim that "tourist money ends up in the budget of an aggressor state" is correct, and it rests precisely on this revenue structure.

What exactly is prohibited and from what date

Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2033 of October 23, 2025 replaced paragraph 2 of Article 5n of Regulation 833/2014 with a direct formulation: it is prohibited to provide services directly related to tourism activities in Russia (EUR-Lex, Regulation 2025/2033). The transition period applied only to contracts concluded before October 24, 2025, and ended on January 1, 2026; after that date there are no exceptions (Skadden, analysis of the 19th sanctions package, 11.2025).

The list of covered services matters because it directly affects our genre. It includes services of travel agencies and tour operators, services of tour guides, and advertising services related to these services (Skadden, 11.2025). The prohibition also extends to online platforms and applications that allow booking, selling tickets, and facilitating visa applications when all of this is connected to tourism (Fieldfisher).

Article 5n, in its broader part, also prohibits providing a range of professional and business services to the Russian government and legal entities established in Russia, including advertising services and market research services (European Commission guidance on Article 5n). In other words, the advertising layer in this provision appeared long before the tourism clause.

It is worth saying separately what this provision does not do. It does not prohibit writing about Russia, criticizing the Russian state, or explaining the legal picture to the reader. That is exactly why the text you are reading exists, and the hotel roundup does not.

There is no way to pay anyway

Even if we set the law aside, a hotel roundup has a purely practical problem that turns it into a useless list. Visa and Mastercard announced the suspension of operations in Russia on March 6, 2022. Since March 10, 2022, cards issued outside the country have stopped working there (The Moscow Times, 06.03.2022). The German Foreign Office confirms this in its current travel advice: using cards common in Germany is currently impossible (Auswärtiges Amt).

We do not describe ways around this, and we will not: that would be exactly the kind of practical travel information we have stopped providing in all texts in this section.

The market reacted to all of this earlier than the legislator did. According to estimates cited by Fox News, organized tourism to Russia fell by roughly 90 percent already in 2022 (Fox News, 2022). In other words, by the time of deletion, our roundups were describing an offer that no longer actually existed for a reader from the EU.

What this means for you

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 of 23.10.2025

EUR-Lex

Transition period

Ended 01.01.2026

Skadden, 11.2025

Online booking

Covered by the ban on the same basis as agency services

Fieldfisher

Paying at the hotel with an EU card

Impossible since 10.03.2022

The Moscow Times, Auswärtiges Amt

German Foreign Office advisory

"Vor Reisen in die Russische Föderation wird gewarnt"

Auswärtiges Amt

Getting there

No direct flights between the EU and Russia since 28.02.2022, airports in the south of the country have been closed repeatedly

EUR-Lex, Regulation 2022/334, The Moscow Times

A separate note on insurance and consular assistance: both topics are not covered in this section, because any coverage would turn into preparation for a trip that is officially advised against.

Where to go instead

The question was about the sea right by your room, not about a specific city. The live sections of the site answer that: Turkey, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Greece, Cyprus, as well as Italy and Croatia for a short trip from Germany. Beachfront locations and sea views exist on all of these coasts, and getting there, payment, and insurance all work normally there.

The overall explanation of the editorial decision for the entire section is collected in the section hub. Related topics: our position on summer vacations in Sochi and our position on hotels with pools.

Where we stand

We believe that a list of hotels with descriptions of their merits is advertising material, no matter how it is presented. In our assessment, publishing such material about a country that is waging war against a neighboring state means participating in selling its vacation normalcy, and no editorial disclaimer changes that. That is why we decided to delete all seven roundups and not replace them with "updated" versions.

We also will not list what exactly was in those texts. A hotel name left in an explanation would work as a recommendation, and we no longer give recommendations.

We write about a 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 guides to Russia is about money, sanctions, and reader safety, not nationality.

⁉️🤔 Frequently asked questions

Did you delete the guides because of sanctions or because of your own position?

The legal basis is one thing, and the editorial decision is another, and one does not cancel out the other. Article 5n(2) of Regulation 833/2014 as amended by Regulation 2025/2033 prohibits services related to tourism activities in Russia, including advertising services, from January 1, 2026. At the same time, we did not look for ways to stay within what is formally permitted; we removed the materials entirely.

Is an ordinary article about hotels really considered an advertising service?

We do not provide legal opinions and do not claim to interpret the provision. We rely on the list cited in analyses of the package: services of travel agencies and tour operators, guide services, and advertising services related to them. A hotel guide with ratings and booking links is closer to that list than to a neutral description of a city.

Can you at least say which hotels were in them, for the record?

No. Any listing of properties in such a text reads as a recommendation, and that is exactly what we are avoiding. We name the types of guides we removed and stop there.

What do old links to those lists show now?

They lead to this page in all language versions. The reader gets an explanation and a list of destinations for which we have current materials.

In short

Seven Sochi hotel guides have been removed in full; we do not list names or prices. From January 1, 2026, services related to tourism activities in Russia and their advertising to persons in the EU are prohibited. Paying at a Russian hotel with a German card has been impossible since March 10, 2022. Organized tourism to the country fell by roughly 90 percent back in 2022. The seaside destinations we continue to cover are listed above.

How you can help

We do not collect money and 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.