Budget pod hotels come to Moscow to combat sky-high room rates

A short walk from Belorusskaya railway station, a 35-minute train ride from the airport, Moscow’s first Japanese-style capsule hotel offers travellers a night’s accommodation in the city center for as little as $85. Leonardo Terigli, a businessman from Florence who sells gourmet food products to Italian restaurants in the Russian capital, flew to Moscow for less than 24 hours to hold a single meeting, spending a total of $350 on travel, including his flight. For Moscow, ranked as the world’s most expensive hotel destination in a U.K. study last month, the arrival of the box- like sleeping quarters with a size of less than four square meters, is a revolution for business visitors like Terigli. “It’s incredible,” he says as he checks out of the Sleepbox Hotel, three days after it opened for business on Jan. 29. “This kind of thing was possible in London or New York, now it’s even possible in Moscow.” The world’s first capsule hotel opened in the Japanese city of Osaka in 1979 and the concept has spread to Europe and America, with European airport locations now followed