The choice of accommodation facilities for visitors in Ivano-Frankivsk has widened since last Thursday, when the newly-built Park Hotel opened the doors to its first guests.
Photo from the Park Hotel web site (www.parkhotel.com.ua/)
The four-storied building is seated in the vicinity of recreational area near a lake, some two kilometers from the city center. It has 40 rooms and suites, two restaurants, a grill bar, a conference room, a business negotiations room equipped for international telecommunication facilities, a sauna, an exercise room, and a billiard room.
The Park Hotel complex is a family business, one of it owners, Yuriy Solovey, told the LED Monitor on Friday. He said investments into the hotel totaled $5.5 million.
According to Mr. Solovey, the Park Hotel meets the four star standard, although the owners have not applied for official certification. He said each room has microclimate system, Wi-Fi Internet access, and all other conveniences one expects to find in a hotel of this rating.
He claimed that the Park Hotel is the first four-star in Ivano-Frankivsk. Nonetheless, a comparison of room rates stated on web sites of hotels in the city shows that pricesasked by the Park Hotel are certainly competitive.
As Mr. Solovey explained, the decision to build and run a hotel was taken because there is "no serious competition at this [hotel] market." He said the industry's other actors in Ivano-Frankivsk represent mainly old, although modernized, hotels, whereas the Park Hotel was built to meet up-to-date hotel requirements, including room space and equipment.
He also reported that managers from one of large-scale international companies, which is developing its investment project in Ivano-Frankivsk, will live in the Park Hotel on permanent basis.
In 2005, Ivano-Frankivsk was among the first Ukrainian cities where the USAID LED project helped the communities work out their economic development strategies. Mr. Solovey – at the time the head of the Ivano-Frankivsk City Rada Economy Department – says he was one of initiators of this work in the city. "And now I realize the Strategic Plan in practice," he says.
The Strategic Vision of Ivano-Frankivsk, as stated in its Economic Development Strategic Plan, among other things reads that "Ivano-Frankivsk will be a renowned and attractive center of exciting vacationing in the Carpathian region with a wide choice of opportunities for urban and business tourism."