Proposed hotel complex relocated from Liinakhamari to Titovka

There will never be a huge tourism complex at Liinakhamari on the shores of the Pechenga fjord.

The plans, supposed to create new jobs to compensate for those lost when the smelter in Nikel was shut down in December 2020, is once and for all torpedoed by the FSB Border Guard Service and military interests on the Kola Peninsula.

Liinakhamari, originally an old Finnish port town from the days before the area was ceded to the Soviet Union after the Winter War, is inside FSB’s border zone. Likely, the idea of having thousands of domestic and foreign tourists walking around was not very tempting for the security services.

Instead, the Nornickel founded development company Valla Tunturi now presents new plans for a comprehensive tourism complex for the Sredny- and Rybachy peninsulas a few tens of kilometers to the east.

Billions of rubles will be invested in glamping sites, a route network for off-roaders to the coast of the Barents Sea, trails to a nearby waterfall and other infrastructure to be built. Most important: a brand new hotel complex at Staraya Titovka.

The village Staraya (old) Titovka is today most known for its road café, serving travelers between Murmansk and Norway for the last three decades.

The café offers accommodation in some 20 former Norwegian roadworkers barracks that were brought here in the early 1990ties as part of a project with Norway co-financing snow removal of the road over the nearby mountain.

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The new 3-stars hotel will provide guests with comfort in the other end of the scale compared with today’s barracks. 

With 120 rooms, the new hotel complex at Titovka will be designed with modern facilities and serve as a basecamp for explorers heading out to the picturesque coast peninsulas to the Barents Sea.

There are inconsistent reports on when construction will start. Nornickel’s newspaper in Monchegorsk, the Kn51, reported project start-up to begin in 2023, while a more recent article in Nord-News quotes an investor to the project saying work on the roads in the area will start in 2022, but that it will take one and a half to two years to complete all design and documentation needed.

The tourism project has been included in a favorable tax regime recently established in the Murmansk region.