Almaty, Dream Destination?
Translated post by Adam from the Russian-language blog.
Almaty is going to become a new international tourist hotspot, says Wall Street Journal. It has been listed by the tourist business professionals among such dream destinations as Vietnam, San-Paulo, the Caribbeans and Seychelles, Mauritius and Abu-Dhabi. Kazakhstan, known on the West as one of the “wild Stans”, homeland for Borat and horse sausages, ca hardly be compared to all of the abovementioned places – climate is not great too - summers can be brutally hot, winters extremely cold. But the construction of the first Ritz-Carlton hotel in Central Asia here testifies to the opposite, experts say.
Simon Cooper, one of the top-managers of Ritz-Carlton group believes a trip to Kazakhstan could be captivating, complete with tours of historic cathedrals, shopping for designer clothes and alpine skiing. His company is viewing involvement in Kazakhstan as primarily to targeted on business travelers, but he says he hopes it will one day appeal to the leisure market, too.
Cooper says Ritz-Carlton first drew its attention to Kazakhstan in 2004, noting the country’s fast-growing gross domestic product and booming oil industry. A bit later, the group worked with the Kazakh developers Capital Partners in Moscow. At the presentation of exceptionally expensive Ritz-Carlton hotel – just one minute of walk from the Red Square – the Kazakhs made a pitch to Ritz-Carlton and Marriott that the country’s business capital of Almaty made it ripe territory for something similar.
Then Cooper learned that the architect Robert A.M. Stern was redoing a dilapidated ski resort near Almaty – by the way, again for the Capital Partners. This, he says, was a good sign that the country’s developments were moving in the right direction. A visit to Almaty has finally persuaded him:
“During the flight out, he met financial consultants sitting next to him. Newsstands sold the Economist and the Financial Times. Driving into town from the airport, he passed a Mercedes dealership”, he says.
A Ritz-Carlton hotel will be built in a classic style in the downtown of Almaty, corner of Furmanov and Bogenbai Streets.
on December 12th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Astana might be brutally hot in summer and extremely cold in winter, but Almaty is neither. Sure, sometimes it hits 40 in the summer but the air is pretty dry. In winter it rarely drops much below zero C even at night and there’s very little wind. Snowfall is also very mild; it can snow for a couple days straight and still not seem to amount for more than a few centimeters on the ground.
That said, the idea of Almaty as a tourist mecca is patently ridiculous. It lacks one thing that every other location on that list has in spades: coastline. The man-made Kapchigai lake is set in a post-industrial are that looks more like the setting for a post-apocalyptic game like Half-Life than any tourist trap you’ve ever been to.
About the only potential claim to mainstream tourist interest would be skiing, but the existing resort at Chimbulak is essentially one trail and three lifts, the topmost of which is a rickety-looking wooden slat single-seat affair. It’s all serviceable and I have enjoyed using it over the years, but it’s a far cry from being called anything better than third rate compared to mainstream resorts in the States or Europe– both in terms of grooming and on-site facilities.
I can almost guarantee that the Ritz-Carlton is being built to service business travelers, not tourists. Those are the clients that currently occupy the Intercontinentals in Almaty and Astana and the Hyatt Regency as well.
And at some point, just like the residential housing market, the commercial space and hotel sectors will be overbuilt. It’s heading that way now; the only question is how quickly it gets there.
on December 12th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Your comments are very true - especially concerning the Kapchagai landscape
There is a plan of transforming it into a gambling paradise though…
As for Chimbulak, it’s being redone now - a further post on what’s going to be built there is coming soon
on December 14th, 2007 at 10:58 am
I agree with the comments above - Almaty is a business destination, not a tourist destination. Although Almaty does have the nearby Tian Shan Mountains for hiking and skiing, I can’t see it competing on either front with its mountainous European competitors. It’s not as if Almaty has a cost advantage, as accommodation and food costs there sometimes exceed Europe.
Additionally, Almaty’s police are still not particularly tourist-friendly. My husband was questioned for taking a photo of a child’s drawing at a post office and essentially told that photos are not a good idea in Kazakhstan.