MARCH 10 2015 (The Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan wants to attract more tourists to its ski resorts, media quoted the deputy tourism minister Aynura Temirbekova as saying. She said that Kyrgyzstan’s relaxation of its visa regime had already given it a boost. Tourism is a sector that western businesses have said Kyrgyzstan could better exploit.
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s ministry of culture has said it may ban British tour operator Regent Holidays after the company started advertising trips to Nagorno-Karabakh via Armenia. Azerbaijan and Armenia are still officially at war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
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)