Hotels in HELand LED ?
 

Anyone have suggestions for centrally-located and reasonably-priced hotels in Helsinki and St. Petersburg for the beginning of July? Thanks.

We are going to be in both towns, as well as TLL, the first week of July. Another FlyerTalker, who has spent much of the past two years working in Helsinki, recommended the Scandia (Hilton) Simonkentta to me. I was able to get a 92 euro rate there, or I could have used 10,000 Hilton points for a free night.

I have not had the same success finding a reasonable hotel in LED. I'm afraid we are really blowing the budget there, at the Grand Hotel Europe Kempinski. I'll be interested to see what responses you get on LED.

In both cases, I chose the hotel both for its comfort and for its central location. We like a well located hotel so that we can walk as much as possible.

The star system in LED for hotels is very generous. Deduct 1 or 2 from the rating.

There are only 4 upscale hotels in LED. Kempinski, centeral location, very expensive, the Shearton, which I stayed 10 days. A typical Shearton, good location, very expensive for what it is (over $250). The third is Astor & the 4th is the brand new Radison, next to the Shearton.

In the 4* hotels, a friend stayed at the Moscow, and we visited her a couple of times. This would be a 2 1/2* hotel in Paris, Venice, London, or DC. It was clean, somewhat convienent, and had English. (very important if you do not speak Russian). The rates were about $100. The hotel was close enough to the central area.

Some LED hotels are a long way away from central city.

We had great success hiring a cab for portion of the day. do not use the one in front of your hotel, but walk up to the street corner, and use the guy parking there with the little CAB sign on top of his 20 year old car. Ask rate to a place, or for a period of time.

This is a good site to look at all the hotels. I do not know where to find cheap rates.

http://www.hotels.spb.ru/

Grand Hotel Europe Kempinski would be my choice in St. Petersburg. It's better located (right next to the Hermitage) and often cheaper than Nevsky Palace (formerly Sheraton, where I stayed once, and was not particularly impressed, although it was several years ago and I did not have any status with Sheraton at the time).

Astoria and Angleterre should be a bit cheaper (especially Angleterre), and both are recently refurbished historic buildings. They are located pretty well also, next to the St. Isaac's Cathedral.

I haven't seen the Radisson-SAS Royal yet, but it's located on the Nevsky Boulevard, close to the Nevsky Palace hotel. Should not be a bad choice if you can get a decent rate.