Thank you for receiving us today. Mr. Cramer, Could you give us a brief information and a historical background of the Intercontinental Hotel?
The hotel was opened with the occasion of the first cotton conference, because cotton is extremely important for Uzbekistan. The unofficial opening was in October 1996, whereas officially the hotel was open in March 1997. Therefore, this year we celebrated our third year of anniversary. The Intercontinental Hotel has been built by a Turkish Company named "AYSEL" which is widely known not only in Europe but also in Asia for it excellent pool of highly qualified and skilled engineers. In 1998, the representatives of Intercontinental and Crowne Plaza met in Barcelona to discuss the recent and future developments of the two hotel groups and we are proud to announce that Hotel Intercontinental in Tashkent has received not only a very high score but also the chairman's award for the services offered to our esteemed customers. Currently, we are making some investments in order to further upgrade the hotel especially in terms of its decoration.
The Intercontinental Hotel is a part of an integrated complex that comprises of the Aqua park, Tashkent Children's Park, A Shopping plaza, the International business center, other small office buildings, the headquarters of NBU, and the Expocenter with a 3000 sq.m. space including all the facilities, air-conditioning and upgraded toilets. It is essential to mention that the hotel is in close vicinity of the future third metro line. Unfortunately at the moment there are certain difficulties with the third metro line because it passes underneath the lake, but we hope that these issues will be soon resolved and the line will officially opened by mid of next year, perhaps even by the 1 of September on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Uzbekistan Independence. Moreover, I am compelled to specify that our employees are very international as we have three French and three Bulgarian heads of departments and ten others who are almost from all Europeans countries. Our staff consists of 330 employees.
In terms of your surveys what has been your philosophy to achieve this goal? Did you have training programs for your staff, quality control etc.?
I just was going to mention that we have a very exstensive training program with a training manager, and 23 departmental training coordinators in all the departments, since training is one of the highest priorities in the development of local staff, and it is one of our main strategies. Consequently, we do also a lot of safety and security training, and recently we held a refreshment session by one of the head nurses from the Tashkent Medical Center. About 30 employees have already completed this training including the drivers, security staff and the managers on duty. We have conducted English classes and we can proudly affirm that currently, our staff speaks English well enough. I truly hope that next year we will be able to ask the British Council to conduct special classes with different levels of English proficiency, and consequently, we will get some further improvement in English language skills.
Therefore, training is of high significance for us. Normally, we have a Global Transfer System, which is not momentarily applicable to Uzbekistan, but I had already a discussion with the deputy minister and she has expressed a keen interest in our project and therefore willing to help us.
You have been here since 1997. What can you tell us about the development of the hotel? I was going to ask you about the development of tourism and in which stage the tourism is in Uzbekistan today?
Actually, I have been here since the beginning of
2000, and before that I have lived in Holland in
the 80's and in Jordan for four years. If one compares
Jordan with Uzbekistan in terms of tourism opportunities
one can find that Jordan was and it is more open
and responsive toward tourism. Despite of all developments
occurring in Uzbekistan, the lack of a proper ministry
of tourism has certainly affected the appropriate
expansion of the tourism industry. Accordingly,
Jordan in 20 years has come a long way and its economy
is booming due to the tourism industry which the
main source of income. Unfortunately, we fail to
see sometimes, that synergy and interlinking together
from which we can make a force. Obviously, we had
a monopoly position for three years, which made
things easier, but now it is more competitive because
Sheraton is here, as well as Hotel Uzbekistan which
is party improved and refurbished. |
Talking about competition, who are your major competitors and what would be your main advantage?
Our principal competitor is at presently the Sheraton Hotel. The fact is that our service is more complete than Sheraton or any other hotels in town, because we have a very good training in service-skills and well-trained English-speaking staff. Moreover, our facilities are larger which include large conference facilities such as the expocenter and the business center, and also beautiful halls such as 4 nice restaurants and 2 bars, and a beautiful indoor fitness center.
In terms of your target, who are you main target, what is your breakdown of your customers?
Our customers are business guests, tourists, government delegations, group tourists, and also many other segments. The main customers are business guests, about 55%, whereas the other guests such as tourists, principally French, Australian and Americans, are about 25%.
As you know Americans like statistics, could give us some more statistics on how many rooms does your hotel disposes and what has been your turnover this year?
There are 246 rooms of which 22 suites in the hotel. As for the turnover it was about USD15, 000,000 last year, and our occupancy is around 50%.
The final question. You're in the tourism industry and you said there are problems in terms of openness so what do you think about the future of tourism in this country? Where do you see your hotel within this environment in 3 - 4 years from now?
One of our goal is to develop also resorts in other cities of Uzbekistan with bars, hotels in close partnership with Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inns, because in Holiday Inns there are two structures, and therefore the possibilities are existent. For example, we should have some of the hotels like Crown Plaza or Holiday Inns in some of the areas of Uzbekistan, and moreover we would also be interested to have Crowne Plaza here in the city, and eventually in Samarkand and Bukhara. Or perhaps it would be better to have smaller Holiday Inns, which would allow us to have a nicer package. Currently, even if we have a good connection with the hotel "Afrosiab" in Samarkand and "New Bukhara" in Bukhara, it is still difficult because these are different companies.
Regardless of all the problems that the country is facing at the moment such as the conversion problem, I believe that Uzbekistan has fantastic possibilities. For example, the wonderful sights of Uzbeksitan, such as the mountainous area attract many tourists. For example, a friend has a hotel, in a not quite so accessible area, which he is going to open soon a hotel under the NBU. This would be interesting for the international community as well as for the local population. It is about an hour driving and you can go skiing, or it is also lovely in the summer even though it is not accessible for everybody. Culturally, Tashkent'life is very active, and for that reason the Intercontinental Hotel organizes many cultural events, such as concerts, folklore shows and painting exhibitions. In the near future we are planning to hold an exhibition of Nukus paintings, which is a wonderful collection. We have clear strategies, that help us focus on our goals and aims and these are composed of three divisions: "All for one, one for all", "Simply the best" and "On the road from east to west". In our mission is to help develop our team, to obtain recognition for the benefit of our customers and associates, and obviously, for the ministry for foreign economic relations to focus on consistently achieving the expectations of service, quality and profitability in the hospitality industry in Central Asia. Therefore, our strategy is oriented towards providing ongoing opportunities for development and growth to our employees as well to explore all possible profitable business opportunities to enhance constantly our service and facilities. That is why we are working on adding two tennis courts, a "Silk Road" restaurant and few other concepts to become more accessible and appealing to the local community. We will also try to strike for a financial stability, to measure what we manage, ensure climate for open communications, and to expand our flagship status in Central Asia.
NOTE: World Investment News Ltd cannot be made responsible for the content of unedited transcriptions. |
Intercontinental Hotel in Tashkent