The Best Places to Book For Your Stay in Sochi

When viewed from certain angles, the Hyatt Regency Sochi could almost pass for a mighty cruise ship, moored by the city’s pebble shores. This elegant hotel has a number of standout dining spaces, such as Historical Salon with its ceiling and wall murals, where breakfast is served in the mornings. The outdoor pool is vast and perfect for swimming if you get there early. The rest of the day is best spent on the nearby deck chairs.

Another top-notch high-rise hotel with a prime location on the waterfront is Hotel Pullman Sochi Centre. Fitness and leisure are actively encouraged at this property, with large indoor and outdoor pools, plus a fitness centre where the treadmills are placed right in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the Black Sea. Rooms all have private balconies with a table and chairs so that you can enjoy the wide-ranging sea or city views in comfort.

Occupying the same building as the Pullman, Mercure’s own Sochi seafront offering comes at a more budget-friendly price point. While the Mercure’s rooms are smaller and simpler than those of its neighbour, guests are still able to share many of the facilities of the Pullman – such as the outdoor pool, which is open only during summer months. The Mercure also has a lobby bar and Kruzheva, a restaurant serving regional Russian dishes.

For visitors working to a tighter budget, the Sonata Hotel, which is located further north of Sochi, has a glassy rooftop pool and a leafy terrace. While there might well be a slight sense of faded glamour here – burnt orange or striped red curtains, green carpets and the occasional flourish of brown wallpaper – there’s a train station and plenty of beaches a few minutes away, making the Sonata Hotel a good base for explorations of Sochi and further afield.

The Marina Yacht Hotel enjoys a prime position overlooking Sochi’s main port area, a genteel part of the city centre surrounded by bobbing boats on one side, and parks and squares on the other. Rooms enjoy plentiful light from the floor-to-ceiling windows, which illuminates an elegant interior with baroque sensibilities and abstract swirl carpets rendered in charcoal, cream and blue. Fancier rooms even have a hot tub for two with city views.

The moment you head inland from the seafront in Sochi, roads meander up across the contour lines, following routes of least resistance around a series of hills, which cascade like verdant rivers towards the Black Sea. They are dotted with guest houses and boutique hotels, set amidst pretty, flower-filled gardens – hotels such as Grace Nairi. A classical Athenian design motif adorns the common areas with columns and porticoes, particularly around the outdoor pool.

The word Denart is a portmanteau of the Latin words for a place of rest and of creativity, and that is a theme upheld and thoroughly explored in this hotel. There are four classes of room, each with its own characterful style, including Greek meander carpets and deep purple fabrics, or parquet flooring overlooked by golden fleur-de-lis wallpaper. And putting the artistry into Denart is the hotel’s very own staff photographer, on hand for that bespoke photo session during your stay.

Kailas Park Hotel Sochi is surrounded by lush gardens, landscaped to include a pond, a variety of plants and trees, and plenty of East Asian statuary. That latter theme is continued within the hotel, whose main entrance is designed to emulate a Zen Buddhist monastery, while Chinese and Japanese art and calligraphy, or the occasional Thai monastery photo mural, decorate the rooms. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kailas Park’s restaurant serves pan-Asian dishes, including sushi.

Grand Hotel Zhemchuzhina not only provides easy access to the pebble beach and Black Sea waters but for water lovers, the star of the show is the 50m (164ft) outdoor pool. Perhaps not a pool for frivolity, it is, however, a great way to stay healthy on your travels. For families, there’s a children’s pool beside the Olympic one. All that exercise may leave you feeling peckish, and there are no fewer than nine bars and restaurants here, including an American diner and one inside the hotel’s own large wooden frigate.