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Which is the most expensive city in the world? London perhaps? Paris, New York or Tokyo?

You may be surprised to hear that it’s the place that no-one in their right mind would have chosen for a relaxing holiday just a few years ago – Moscow.

The average price paid for a hotel bed in the city (bear in mind this includes low-cost accommodation) is a whopping £167 per night. In New York the figure was £140 and in London just £91.

It hasn’t always been like that. In the late 1980s, I spent a fascinating week travelling around Russia with Sir Richard Branson, who was pioneering three-centre trips to Moscow, St Petersburg and Yalta.

Sir Richard, as you might imagine, was great fun and very entertaining, but that’s a different story.

The flight over on Aeroflot was interesting. By the time the drinks trolley reached us at the end of the aircraft, the only beverages left were cans of coke and beer. Thankfully, that suited us fine.

In Moscow, we stayed in an enormous hotel, which housed thousands of beds and had a reception like an aircraft hanger. A group of Polish construction workers were busy consuming as much alcohol as was humanly possible, in one corner of the room.

Moscow was fascinating for all number of reasons, and I would thoroughly recommend a visit, but if anyone had said at the time that hotels in this city would be able to charge higher prices than anywhere else, they would have been certified.

What a difference money and a regime change can make.

Guest Article by Jeremy Skidmore

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006