Moscow Hotel Deals

Believe it or not, there do seem to be some deals on Moscow hotels at the moment. I checked prices at a number of hotels in Moscow for the night of March 3 with www.booking.com, and found some bargains.
The lowest price, and this is for a place where I actually stayed a few years ago and liked, was at the Maxima Irbis in the northwest sector of the city, convenient if you are arriving at Sheremeteyvo Airport. The price for a room was $88, just over half of what I paid on a visit in September, 2007. This is a smaller but modern hotel, with a great buffet breakfast and English-speaking staff. The main disadvantage is that is it a fair walk to the closest Metro.
Second lowest was another place I stayed, the Izmailove Alfa Hotel on the east side of town. The rate there for the same night was $110. This hotel is huge, part of a large complex of hotels built for the 1980 Olympics. The location is great, right beside a Metro station and next to Izmailovo Park, a lovely green space. On weekends there is a very good flea market held here. Breakfast is a treat, and the hotel has a certain retro feel with floor attendants who handle your keys. English is spoken by some, but not all the staff.
The Cosmas Hotel is another even larger behemoth, very close to the All Russia Exhibition Center and its Metro. Rooms there go for $125. Close to Moscow State University, the Universitetskaya Hotel is a high rise run by the Moscow Patriarchate where rooms go for $134. If you long to be even more churchy, the Danilovskaya Hotel is actually located on the grounds of the Danilovsky Monastery south of the Moscow River, where the Moscow Patriarch lives. A room here will set you back $210.
Finally, if you want to really splash out on a beautiful, historic place to sleep, The Metropol Hotel right across from the Bolshoi Treatre charges $391 for a basic room. If this is beyond your budget (as it is for mine,) at least walk into the plush Art Nouveau lobby to admire it, and check out the mosaic on the front wall by famed turn of the 20th century artist Maxim Vrubel. There is also (or was the last time I looked,) a plague saying that an early Bolshevik named Sverdlov lived there.