A total of 879 members of 38 official delegations have arrived for the Eurovision Song Contest in Kyiv and are accommodated in 13 hotels of the Ukrainian capital, said Mykola Grytsyk, acting manager of the Main Directorate of Hotel Management, Tourism and Resorts of the Kyiv State City Administration, at a press conference yesterday. According to Grytsyk, the European Broadcasting Union was mostly offered accommodation for official delegations in 21 hotels in central Kyiv, however, they only chose six hotels from that list – the Rus, Sport, Lybid, Premier Palace, President and Rus International. Their choice was primarily motivated by two factors – hotels’ location and their living conditions. Mr. Grytsyk also said that the hotels’ price policy remained at the January 2005 level. He refuted information regarding the exorbitant cost of accommodation in Kyiv hotels. According to Grytsyk, the capital has hotels offering rooms at low prices: For example, the hotel at Zhuliany Airport is ready to offer accommodation at 30 hryvnias a day. Grytsyk also said that the recently opened Radisson and Sofia Sheraton hotels are not being used to accommodate members of official delegations because these hotels did not agree their price policy with the contest’s organizers. Prior to the contest the hotels were inspected by the Main Directorate of Hotel Management, Tourism and Resorts to check whether their certification was valid. In general, the authorities have concluded that Kyiv currently suffers from a serious lack of four- and five-star hotels. Although there are some in the city, practice has shown that the number of guests coming to the capital of a modern European country requires a much larger number of appropriate hotels.