Silk Road Lodge panoramas – Business Centre and Conference Room
The conference room set up for a meeting
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 is, of course, to provide accommodation, but guests are all unique and each has their own expectations and needs.
Breakfast, for example, is included in the price of accommodation and so we need to have a dining room and kitchen. Many guests want to keep up with news from home so television and internet access are important.
Many of our guests are businessmen and they need access to a wide variety of facilities and so we included a Business Centre equipped with up-to-date amenities: fax, scanner, projector, photocopying facilities, wireless Internet access and a Conference Room.
When we built the hotel, the business centre was a small and cramped and the conference room was on the top floor of the hotel which was inconvenient. As a result we conducted some renovations in 2012 relocating both of them. We added some lounge furniture in the Business Centre so that people could sit and relax with, say, a cup of coffee, for example whilst waiting for someone to arrive.
The rennovated Business Centre
The Business Centre also offers a variety of, such as: use of the various available facilities; arranging meetings by telephone, for transport services and interpreters.
Computers, printers, faxes can be hired for use in rooms. Video machines and CD machines are also available for hire — with a selection of videotapes, DVDs and CDs available for guests to use, at no extra charge.
There is also a shop selling toiletries, snacks, drinks, books, maps, souvenirs, etc.
We also operate a “book swap” scheme, which works on the basis of “leave one and take one”, which we started because we found that guests sometimes asked where they could get English language books in Bishkek because they had finished the one(s) they had brought with them, (and although there are a few places in Bishkek where it is possible to find English books for sale … there aren’t many of them). The “library” also has a few books left by guests in other languages.
We moved the Conference Room from the top floor down to the first floor which now leads off the lobby and which many clients find far more convenient.
To be honest, the name “Conference Room” sounds rather grand and probably conjures up images of large halls … but in reality it is a light and airy room which can accommodate up to 40 people, (although, I have to admit that it can feel a little cramped after about 30 people). On the other hand, the alternative of Meeting Room conjures up images of much smaller rooms suitable for small groups.
Here are a couple of panoramas of the business centre and conference room to give you an idea:
The first, the conference room:
and the second the business centre, with the shop and coffee bar :
As I said, like all photographs, they still present a “snapshot” in time – for example, there is no-one in the conference room and the business centre appears a little darker than in reality – but, hopefully, they give a better impression of the overall space.
Bishkek