Postcard from Bishkek

One of the most difficult questions I face is trying to decide when and where to place my advertising budget. One of the maxims of marketing is that it is supposed to bring in new business – and different figures are often quoted for that value of that return on investment … and although I […]

They say that you only get one chance to make a good first impression – so work at it. First impressions can be misleading.  You need to think hard about how to present yourself and what message you want to get over.  Let me illustrate with a story: One of the most memorable day trips […]

Technically, a tourist is someone who spends at least one night away from home. That’s the lower limit.  There is an upper limit as well, but that tends to depends on who’s definition is being used.  One definition talks of someone travelling for up to a year, but more generally it seems to be up […]

A short while ago we did a short presentation of the hotel for a group of students following a Hotel Management course at one of Bishkek’s universities. As I understood the request, the idea may simply to get them out of the classroom and into a real hotel … it wasn’t clear how many of […]

Today, the Silk Road Lodge – our hotel in Bishkek – becomes a teenager! It was 13 years ago today that we opened the doors and accepted our first guests. Since then, Kyrgyzstan – and Bishkek in particular – has changed considerably.

  When we established our hotels, one of the things that my partners were adamant about was – Breakfast: “Whatever happens – Make sure that you give the guests a good breakfast!” Both of my partners were international lawyers who travelled the globe on business and they couldn’t stress too much how important it was […]

When we set up[ the website for the Silk Road Lodge, I took a lot of “ribbing” over one particular aspect – the graphic used in the section “Rooms“: “What business are we in”, I was asked by one particular employee, “a hotel or are we selling doors?”

Although we are a Tour Company, the Silk Road Lodge, (our hotel in Bishkek), caters for a wide variety of guests with a variety of needs, and not just tourists. As a result we tried to include facilities which would make their stay in Kyrgyzstan both pleasant and productive. The main business of a hotel […]

I wrote last week about placing some panoramas on the Silk Road Lodge website … and mentioned that we had originally used graphics rather than photos as the main motif. On the main page, for example, there is this artist’s rendition 0f the exterior of the building: Although it is not possible to stand on a […]

Over the years, I have faced a certain amount of controversy concerning out various websites … for example: why do we have so many?; should we have special custom designed sites or make use of site engines such as WordPress? … and so on. Interestingly, the site that has caused me the most controversy was […]