Many hotels in Baku have paused selling rooms for this year’s COP29 climate summit, triggering fears of imminent, government-mandated price hikes, while costs to book other accommodations have skyrocketed.
Online listings show zero availability during the Nov. 11-24 talks at international hotel chains in Azerbaijan’s capital, including the Fairmont, InterContinental, Hyatt, Sheraton, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, and Mercure.
There is widespread availability during the middle two weeks of October at all of these hotels, with seemingly standard room rates of between $50/night for basic accommodations at Ibis Baku City and $750/night for a luxury stay at the five-star Four Seasons.
An employee of the Radisson Baku told Climate Home that the hotel is not selling rooms at the moment at the request of the government-controlled State Tourism Agency, with at least one other potential customer said to have received the same response.
Other Baku hotels appear to have availability, but the room rates in some cases are at least eight times higher during COP29 compared to a month earlier.
For example, according to its website a room at the “luxurious and unforgettable” Art Club hotel is a consistent $82/night in October 2024, but that surges to between $530 and $686 a night in November.
You can book a Single Superior room via Hotels.com at the “upscale” Shah Palace Luxury Museum Hotel for Nov. 10-24 for an eye-watering $199,229, or $12,059 a night.
In contrast, staying in a Superior room at the same place the week before will set you back just $85 a night.
It’s unclear if the Azeri State Tourism Agency intends to set a minimum room rate, as it could not be reached by Carbon Pulse and did not respond to Climate Home’s requests for comment.
At 2022’s COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian Hotel Association reportedly told hotels to set a minimum price of $120/night for two-star hotels and $500/night for five-star ones, and some bookings made at lower rates were not honoured and guests were asked to pay more upon arrival.
That came a year after reports of price gouging at COP26 in Glasgow, which forced some delegates to stay more than an hour away in Edinburgh.
For both summits, many attendees including Carbon Pulse had their bookings cancelled in the run-up to the event to allow the operators to resell their rooms at much higher prices.
Even 2018’s COP24 in Katowice featured soaring room rates after management of the Polish city’s hotel bookings for the summit were handed to Warsaw-based tour operator Mazurkas.
While it remains to be seen if or how room rates at the major hotel chains change once bookings for COP29 resume, green groups and other members of civil society, who typically attend the annual climate summit as important observers, are already voicing concern that many could be priced out of making the trip to Baku.
news@carbon-pulse.com
