JAN. 6 2015, (The Conway Bulletin) — A Sheraton hotel, owned by the Starwood Hotels & Resorts brand, has opened in Dushanbe, media reported. Dushanbe is undergoing something of a hotel boom in recent years with several major chains opening in the Tajik capital.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
NOV. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Aiming to give tourism a lift, Armenia said it would join the EU-funded Black Sea Silk Road Corridor which already includes Georgia, Turkey and Greece. The focus of the corridor is a 3,000km path that weaves through 150 cultural sites. Armenia’s government has earmarked tourism as a way of boosting the economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 208, published on Nov.12 2014)
OCT. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Against the backdrop of worsening security in the Middle East and apparently without a trace or irony, Uzbek president Islam Karimov used a speech at the UN in New York to promote Uzbekistan as a safe tourist, media reported. Uzbekistan sells itself as the centre of the old Silk Road.
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(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)
JUNE 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Looking to expand its economy beyond the obvious gas sector, Turkmen officials appear to have hit on the hot idea of developing its tourist sector using a hole in the ground that burns natural gas.
Dubbed “The Gates to Hell”, Turkmen officials have been talking up its allure to international tourists.
“Landmarks such as the burning crater are hugely interesting both to people who love to travel and to researchers in various areas,” AFP quoted Ovez Kurbanov of the National Institute of Deserts, Flora and Fauna, as saying.
“Our main task is to create an attractive image of Turkmenistan as a tourism destination.”
The crater, 270km from Ashgabat and roughly the size of half a football pitch, has been burning since 1971 when the earth collapsed during exploration by Soviet scientists. They lit the fumes coming from the pit and it is still burning today.
Turkmenistan international profile has become so entwined with gas that even its main tourist attraction is a homage to it.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
APRIL 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Construction work at the turquoise domed Registan in Samarkand, listed by UNESCO as a world heritage site, has damaged a couple of the towers, media reported. Two of the madrassa’s 18th century towers have developed a lean of 8cm since work began on building an amphitheatre in the complex.
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(News report from Issue No. 183, published on May 7 2014)
APRIL 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — More and more foreign tourists are heading to Nukus in Karkalpakstan, western Uzbekistan, to visit the dried up Aral Sea, the Eurasianet website reported. The Aral Sea had been a major inland sea but Soviet water systems siphoned off water and it shrivelled to a fraction of its size.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
MARCH 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan has doubled its tourist numbers since 2003, media reported quoting the ministry of culture. It said that last year 2.3m tourists visited Azerbaijan, slightly down from 2012, when Azerbaijan hosted the Eurovision Song Contest. Azerbaijan wants to hit 5m tourists a year.
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(News report from Issue No. 178, published on April 2 2014)
MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Pollution and poor irrigation management have killed off much of the fish in Lake Sevan in Armenia, media quoted experts as saying. Lake Sevan is one of the world’s biggest fresh water lakes and one of Armenia’s main tourist attractions.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
SEPT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan will allow five more airports, mainly in the eastern Ferghana Valley, to accept international flights, media reported. The flights are likely to serve Russia where labourers head for jobs, underlining the importance of Uzbekistan’s migrant workforce to its economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
BATUMI/Georgia, OCT. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The rain lashed down. It turned Batumi’s roads into streams and sent tourists scuttling for cover. Sudden downpours are part of the summer scene at this resort town on Georgia’s Black Sea coast but it still takes unsuspecting tourists by surprise.
And it’s an eclectic mix of tourists. There are Georgians, Russians, Kazakhs and other tourists from the former Soviet Union, as well as Western backpackers and businessmen.
Then there are the Iraqis and Iranians. Georgia’s tourism agency said 10,811 Iraqis and 11,032 Iranians entered the country in August. After visitors from the former Soviet Union and Turkey, Iraqis and Iranians are the two biggest groups.
An investigation by the Wall Street Journal earlier this year said Iranian businessman, who until recently didn’t need a visa to enter Georgia, were setting up Georgian companies to avoid US sanctions. Possibly, but many Iranian and Iraqi visitors are going to Georgia to holiday.
There are now direct flights to Tbilisi from Tehran, Baghdad, Erbil in Kurdish Iraq and Basra on the Iraqi Persian Gulf. From Tbilisi, Batumi is an easy five hours by train.
In central Batumi three rather rotund Iraqi men had taken advantage of a break in the rain to dash into a barber shop. They grinned and sat down to wait their turn.
“Georgia is great. Very calm and relaxing,” one of the men said.
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(Correspondent’s Notebook from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
