The new 109-room Mercure Moscow Arbat hotel was inaugurated on 13 June by the Accor group in the city's historic district. The hotel is equipped with free Wi-Fi, a fitness centre, several meeting rooms, as well as a French-Russian restaurant and a bar. It becomes the hotel group's twelfth hotel in Russia, and paves the way for a new dynamic in this promising market. Accor plans to have a total of fifty hotels in the Russia-CIS zone by 2016, and two new Mercure hotels will be inaugurated on the Russian market by the end of the year. Armenia, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan are also in the sights of the hotel group, which will also be launching the Pullman brand next year, followed by Adagio in 2014. "Thanks to the strength of our brands and our distribution network, we are ideally positioned to seize the growth opportunities offered by this market, where demand is rising sharply, particularly in the mid-range and economy segments," stresses Yann Caillère, Accor's Chief Operating Officer.
