Silk Road Lodge panoramas – Rooms
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":
The infamous graphic
“What business are we in”, I was asked by one particular employee, “a hotel or are we selling doors?”
Hmmm, I thought to myself, an interesting question. Let’s face it, the provision of accommodation is the main business of the hotel … it’s our core business and anything that detracts from that is not good.
In the end, however, I decided that the graphic showed a number of rooms along a corridor such as you would normally find in a hotel – and so I stayed with it. I admit that it is not ideal – the space between the doors suggests small rooms – very small rooms, in fact – whereas we deliberately chose to have rooms which were larger than usual.
One reason why there are four doors is that we have four types of room:
- Singles – eight rooms, each with a single bed,
- Twins – eight rooms, each with two single beds,
- Deluxe rooms – four spacious and airy rooms, each with a King size bed, and
- Suites – each comprising two rooms: one, a bedroom and the other serving as a living, or sitting, room. Two of the eight Suites have two single beds whereas the others are fitted with King size beds.
I am often asked why we chose to have four distinct types of room, especially as they all come more or less equally equipped, with en suite facilities, a fridge, television, coffee making facilities, and In reply I often say that for one or two nights, a single, or twin, is quite sufficient, but if I was staying for a week or ten days, then I would prefer to have the extra space of a Deluxe room … on the other hand, for a visit lasting longer I would welcome having a separate bedroom.
The pages on the site describing the rooms each displayed photographs of the room, so I felt that that would give a good impression of what the rooms were actually like. On the other hand, I quite like Victor’s Spherical Panoramas which give, I think, a better feel for them … and so I asked him to go into the rooms and photograph them for us. Here is a sample of what he came up with:
The first, a single room:
The second a twin room :
As I said, like all photographs, they still present a “snapshot” in time but, hopefully, they give a better impression of the overall space.
Third, the recently refurbished Deluxe room:
Finally, a Living room from one of the Suites:
As I said, like all photographs, they still present a “snapshot” in time but, hopefully, they give a better impression of the overall space.
Bishkek