JSC “Business Real Estate”, which is a part of Sistema JSFC, won the auction for the sale of a 8.74% owned Hotel Company in Intourist, follows from the bidding protocol. This package was initially sold for 621.9 million rubles, and the application "Business Real Estate" was the only one, the document says. The final amount of the proposal from the buyer in the final protocol is not specified.

A representative of Sistema announced that the share in EES Intourist cost the company 30 million rubles. A representative of the controlling VTB Hotel Company did not respond to the Vedomosti request.

EAO Intourist is the oldest Soviet and Russian hotel and travel company. She was founded back in 1929. From her accounts it follows that she owns hotels with a general fund of more than 2,000 rooms. In particular, it owns a controlling stake in the largest Moscow hotel Cosmos, as well as several hotels abroad (the Czech Republic, Italy, Namibia).

After buying the share of the Hotel Company, Sistema actually became the sole owner of Intourist with a share of 99.98%.

Until December 2018, the corporation owned 66.2% of the shares of Intourist, but then it bought out another 25.04% from an individual who had previously acquired this package from the Moscow government. The latter also belonged to the Hotel Company, which owned a number of hotels (Vladykino, Zolotoy Kolos, Altai, Sayany, etc.). But in 2014, the Moscow mayor's office transferred it along with some markets, pawnshops and the Yuzhny agricultural complex to the VTB group in exchange for Energocomplex.

HLW Intourist is the last hotel asset of VTB, it follows from the disclosure of the Hotel Company, all the other hotels were sold out.

The increase in the share in VAO Intourist was carried out as part of the consolidation of hotel assets, said a spokesman for Sistema. According to him, it allows you to increase cash flow from them.

The shares of the Hotel Company in VAO Intourist would hardly be of interest to anyone other than Sistema, according to Stanislav Ivashkevich, owner of the management company Ivashkevich Hospitality. The head of the hotel business and tourism department at Cushman & Wakefield, Marina Smirnova, agrees with him.

Firstly, such a package does not allow to influence decision-making by the majority shareholder, and secondly, today Intourist is no longer such a significant player in the market as it was before, Ivashkevich notes. He recalls that not so long ago, Sistema restructured the hotel business. The functions of ownership and management of hotels were divided between Business Property and the Cosmos Group. Smirnova believes that there was not much point in purchasing such a package from AFK Sistema. But, perhaps, given that the price for the package was reduced almost 20 times, the company found such a deal attractive. She adds that if Sistema decides to sell Intourist, it will be much easier to find a buyer for almost 100% of the company.