Is it cheaper to rent an apartment?

Economic recession, unusually low temperatures and large snowfalls caused Saint Petersburg hotels to be extremely unpopular within tourists: they’ve got fewer guests than previous year.

Those tourists who chose hotels were attracted by discounts and bonuses. Hotels managed to get some clients but mainly due to price reduction of about 40%. Besides, tourists do not reserve a hotel room in advance: in previous years reservation period have been started in November; in 2009 people were looking for a hotel room just a couple days before holidays.
Price reduction has touched not only Saint Petersburg hotels. In the entire world hotel room prices have decreased by 14 per cent. The web-site Hotels.com recently has published a new hotel industry research based on real prices, on those amounts that were paid by tourists in 94 000 rooms of 16 000 world cities.
Moscow still keeps its second place among the most expensive cities in the world, but such a landslide of prices hasn’t been seeing here before. For those tourists who pay dollars and euro prices are lower twice (44% and 41%, respectively). For the Britons with their pounds reduction is 27%. 
European hotels accommodation became cheaper by 13%, for the USA it’s 14%, for Asia – 16%, and 21% for the Latin America.
Price reduction was also noted in Saint Petersburg. For tourists using dollars while paying prices are lower by 25%, for euro users – by 21%, for those who pay in pounds reduction is 18%.
Experts say that the main reason of such situation is the much-talked about economic recession. 70% of Russian tourists from other cities came to Saint Petersburg by their own without any tour agencies involved, and many tourists rented apartments or stayed at their friends or relatives homes.
To make a comparison, Fontanka.ru has published prices of large world hotel nets presented also in Saint Petersburg. One day in Corinthia Nevsky Palace costs 10 019 rubles, which is twice more expensive than in Lisbon (5 375 rubles). Mariott hotel costs 10000 rubles in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg it’s 4500 rubles, and 6837 rubles in Paris. Sokos hotels in Helsinki are cheaper by 40% than in Saint Petersburg (3354 rubles and 7215 rubles respectively). One day in Saint Petersburg Novotel costs 19% higher than in the same Novotel in Amsterdam (7673 and 6276 rubles respectively).
As such research shows short-term rental is much more advantageous for tourists than hotels. You can find an apartment for 1800 rubles per day in Saint Petersburg. Also it’s a fact that apartments of different categories offer different services and various equipment.