A wind of change is about to stir the dust in the corridors of dowdy Intourist hotels across Russia following the signing of a major deal that will place 9, 000 Moscow hotel beds under the control of a U. S. hotel management group.


Carlson Hospitality, a huge marketing and travel group that already manages the Radisson Slavyanskaya near Kievsky station, has formed a joint venture with Mosintour to run all the hotels in Moscow not covered by contracts with other foreign managers.


The deals covers many of the hotels built in the old Soviet style, among them the Intourist, the Cosmos, the Mozhaiskaya, the Globus and the Belgrade.


Many Intourist hotels have developed a reputation with foreign tourists as sleazy and impersonal institutions controlled by rude doorman, KGB agents and organized prostitution.


The new 50-50 joint venture, Carlson Mosintour Management, aims to change all that.


Nikolai Shevelkin, president of Mosintour, said, "We brought in Carlson because we realized we needed to improve the quality of our tourism services. We needed outside experience and technology to run hotels at world standard". Carlson will have responsibility for revamping and then promoting the hotels. A staff of American management executives will be set up at a headquarters in Moscow to work with Russian partners on a day-to-day basis. Several of the hotels operated by the new company will become Radisson hotels when they are renovated to Western standards.


Juergen Bartels, Carlson's president, said that the company would use the approach it had used at the Radisson Slavyanskaya, which has run at over 80 percent occupancy for the last year and a half.


"We will try to run hotels that are not too high and not too low", he said. "That is what Moscow needs".


Bartels said that Carlson would try to bring a "Yes I can" attitude to its hotels. He declined to specify which hotels would be the first to get the Radisson treatment.


Bartels estimates that 30 million people want to come to Moscow as opposed to the 2 million who now visit it each year. Carlson would use its marketing and travel agency network in the United States to fill its rooms.


The Intourist hotels of Moscow are only a first step, he said. Carlson had a goal of starting up a new hotel somewhere in the world every week until the year 2000, so expansion to the rest of Russia would come soon.


Mosintour, a joint-stock company founded by the Moscow government and Intourist, now owns many of Moscow's best hotels, among them the Radisson Slavyanskaya, the Metropol and the Olympic Penta. Carlson's deal will not affect existing management contracts covering these hotels.


As the joint venture earns hard-currency profits, Carlson will consider building hotels of its own or renovating existing sites.


Mosintour is hoping that the Carlson deal will convince Western capital that tourism and hospitality in Russia is a good investment. Shevelkin said that Moscow would need $1 billion to realize its tourism potential and that at least $200 million would be needed in the short-term.