Where in Russia should you buy or build a mountain property for short-term rental? We compared nine ski destinations using open data for 2025–2026: tourist flow, season length, summer demand, travel time from Moscow, entry price, nightly rates and new hotel supply. The charts and a summary matrix are in the gallery.

The author is Bugrov Capital, a management company that builds and operates guest houses in Teberda, 22 km from Dombay. Market figures come from the media, booking platforms and government bodies; the company's own data (from the Bnovo booking system) is marked separately.

The market: the season grew, but not everywhere
— According to the Ministry of Economic Development, Russian ski resorts recorded more than 9 million visits in the 2025/26 season, 11% more than a year earlier.
— Growth was uneven. PEGAS Touristik saw ski tour bookings fall by 12%, and Rosa Khutor received 570,000 guests in winter, down from 865,000 a year earlier.
— According to Yandex Travel, the largest shares of ski-region bookings in winter 2025/26 went to Krasnodar Krai (30%), Moscow and the Moscow region (17%) and Karachay-Cherkessia (10%).
— The average night sold at ski resorts, according to Ostrovok, was 12,900 ₽ (+11%).

Nine destinations in brief

Krasnaya Polyana (Sochi)
Russia's largest mountain cluster: 174 km of slopes, 64 lifts and strong summers. But winter guest numbers in 2025/26 fell by a third, due to a late season start, prices and Sochi airport, which was closed 16.8% of the time over the last 90 days. Nightly rates have nearly stopped growing (12,900 ₽, +4%), and entry is the most expensive at 0.45–1.65 million ₽ per m².

Sheregesh (Kuzbass)
The leading resort east of the Urals: 1.3–1.7 million guests a year, a season of about six months and an average night of 12,300 ₽. New apartments by the slopes cost 430–530,000 ₽ per m². It is 8–9 hours from Moscow, summers are weak, and the master plan provides for about 7,600 new hotel rooms.

Arkhyz (Karachay-Cherkessia)
1.07 million guests in 2025, about half of them in summer. 27 km of slopes today and 57 km by 2030. Room stock is set to grow from about 2,100 to 12,000, and entry costs 190–930,000 ₽ per m².

Elbrus area (Kabardino-Balkaria)
The longest season in the country, 247 days, with a summer comparable to winter. Resale flats in Terskol cost 260–310,000 ₽ per m², but nightly rates are low, and mudflows, avalanches and wind regularly stop the cable cars.

Manzherok (Altai Republic)
The fastest growth in nightly rates: 12,200 ₽, +25% in a year. The resort is being built by Sber, its slopes are growing from 81 to 110 km, and entry costs 150–250,000 ₽ per m². Room stock is set to grow about sixfold by 2030.

Khibiny (Kirovsk)
The second-longest season, 194 days, plus the polar day and the northern lights. About 472,000 guests per winter, nights at 8,200 ₽ (+22%) and flats at 90–115,000 ₽ per m². Key projects, a slope-side hotel and the airfield upgrade, have moved to 2029–2030.

Bannoe and Abzakovo (Bashkortostan)
About 225,000 guests per winter, strong summers on the lake and an entry price of 76–100,000 ₽ per m². But the slopes are short: a weekend resort for the Urals.

Gubakha (Perm Krai)
The cheapest entry at about 33,000 ₽ per m². Demand holds at about 200,000 guests per winter, and according to the resort's owner, a coke plant's sanitary zone affects about 80% of its territory.

Dombay and Teberda (Karachay-Cherkessia)
The Teberda–Dombay area received 1.05 million tourists in 2025, and summer visits to Dombay grew almost 1.5 times. The average winter night in Dombay is 8,300 ₽, compared with 12,400 ₽ in Arkhyz. Slopes are being developed under a master plan to reach 36 km by 2031, and two 5-star hotels with 786 rooms will open in 2028–2029, bringing even more guests to the valley.

Five patterns

1. Logistics matter more than fashion. Sochi airport was closed 16.8% of the time over 90 days, while Mineralnye Vody and Nalchik hardly closed at all. Rosa Khutor lost a third of its winter guests, while Karachay-Cherkessia led Russia in tourist trip growth in the first quarter of 2026.

2. Nightly rates grow where a new product appears: Manzherok +25%, Kirovsk +22%. Where the product stays the same, growth stalls: Krasnaya Polyana +4%.

3. Room supply is growing faster than demand. Arkhyz and Manzherok will grow it 5–6 times by 2030. A standard apartment in a large building will compete with hundreds of identical ones; a detached house with its own facilities will not.

4. Summer and season length make the year. For an owner, how many months a house is booked matters more than record New Year weeks.

5. Legal land near a resort is scarce. Near Dombay, the Prosecutor General's Office is returning national park plots to the state; at Gubakha, a factory's sanitary zone covers the resort. Land within a town, with a clear legal status, becomes the key asset.

Why we chose Teberda: eight reasons
1. Demand is growing faster than the market. Karachay-Cherkessia ranks third among regions by ski bookings, the number of guests in its accommodation rose 2.4 times in 2025, and tourist flow grew 14% in the first half of 2026.
2. Two full seasons. In winter, skiing in Dombay; in summer, Teberda National Park, lakes, gorges and waterfalls. Summer visits to Dombay grew 48% in 2025.
3. Reliable access. Mineralnye Vody airport almost never closes, and Teberda is about 2.5 hours away by car. Arkhyz airport, due in 2029, will cut the distance to about 100 km.
4. Rare legal land next to Dombay. Dombay is hemmed in by a national park, while Teberda is a town that was removed from the nature reserve back in 1977, so park restrictions do not apply to town land. Dombay's lifts are 22 km away.
5. An entry price four times lower. A house with land in Teberda costs 146–165,000 ₽ per m², compared with 640–1,200,000 ₽ per m² for new 5-star projects in Dombay and an average of about 600,000 ₽ in Arkhyz.
6. Room for rates to grow. The average night in Dombay (8,300 ₽) is below Arkhyz (12,400 ₽) and Krasnaya Polyana (12,900 ₽).
7. A format hotels don't offer. A detached house with its own hot tub and terrace does not compete with hundreds of new rooms, and Dombay's new hotels will bring even more guests to the valley.
8. A real resort town. Teberda is a climatic resort at about 1,300 m, with shops, sanatoriums and year-round life, not a village that empties after the season.

What Heart of Dombay shows, without a restaurant or its own slope
The 16-house complex has been open since June 2024. It has no restaurant or lift of its own yet, and still:
— Occupancy in 2025 was 61.8%. Year-round glamping sites in Russia run at 50–70% (RBC Research), and according to Sber, fewer than half of the country's roughly 750 glamping sites are in steady demand.
— Winter is growing: 72% in January–February 2026, up from 58% a year earlier. Summer is almost fully booked, at 88–93% in July and August 2025.
— Demand is steady: 2% more nights were sold in January–September 2026 than a year earlier.
— Guests stay longer: the average stay grew from 2.3 nights in 2024 to 2.6 nights in 2026, about 30% above the average for ski regions (2 nights, Yandex Travel). 41% of bookings are for three nights or more.
— Guests book early: on average a month before arrival (31 days, up from 17 in 2024).
— Guests come back: 17% of guests have booked with us more than once.
— About 70% of bookings come direct, through our website, phone and social media, with no booking-platform commission.
— The average nightly rate is 10,100 ₽, and extras (hot tubs, bathhouse, barbecue) add about 19% on top of accommodation revenue.
— Guest ratings are 5.0 on Yandex Maps and Yandex Travel, with more than 900 reviews combined.
All figures come from the Bnovo booking system, and owners receive a report with them every month.

What comes next
Phase two, Heart of Dombay 2.0, is being built next door: 16 houses, mostly two-storey barnhouses of 60–65 m², due to open in autumn 2027. A bathhouse complex and a park will open in 2027, and we are developing a restaurant and a thermal spa with partners. The resort around us is growing too: a new chairlift and gondola in Dombay, slopes reaching 36 km by 2031, and Arkhyz airport in 2029. As with any mountain destination, our forecasts allow for federal infrastructure timelines and the weather, which is why we rely on actual data rather than promises.

Land in Teberda can be owned by Russian citizens and Russian companies; foreign investors, please contact us to discuss options.

Which destination suits whom
— Scale and brand at the highest entry price: Krasnaya Polyana.
— A long season: the Elbrus area and the Khibiny.
— Fast-growing rates amid rising competition: Manzherok and Arkhyz.
— A weekend resort with a cheap entry: Bannoe, Abzakovo and Gubakha.
— A Siberian market with a strong winter: Sheregesh.
— Growing demand, two seasons, reliable access, an affordable entry and your own land: Teberda next to Dombay.

You can contact us through the form on this page, at mc-bugrov-capital.ru, or on Telegram at t.me/mc_bugrovcapital.

This material is based on open data as of 8 October 2026 and is not individual investment advice or a public offer. Resorts count tourist flow using different methods, so figures are comparable only with caveats. Cover photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.