1. I think the Hyatt will be good for Dushanbe. More hotel competition should, eventually, raise the overall quality of lodging throughout the city. Moreover, it’ll be nice to have first-rate conference facilities to attract regional gatherings.

2. I stayed at Hotel Mercury while in Dushanbe, and I thought it was reasonably priced and offered excellent accommodations and service.

3. There seems to be multiple hurdles to raising Tajikistan’s tourism trade. At least in Dushanbe, I’d start with…
A. Reforming the customs process at the airport (getting in is improved, getting out is still a mess). Speaking of getting in and out of the country, the burdensome Visa requirements are incompatible with building a significant tourism trade.
B. The practice of having flocks of underpaid traffic police on every block, who seem to do little to substantively improve traffic safety and who routinely resort to bribery, needs to finally end. I have a hunch removing this entrenched group will be politically difficult, but it has to happen.
C. Clean, safe water. Enough said.

I was in Dushanbe, last year and in fact did visit “Dushanbe” hotel for money withdrawal services, as it had an ATM machine inside. From the personal experience, I was strongly disappointed in the “one the best hotels” in Dushanbe, as even the minor defects of the interior in the lobby were very depressing. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t personally stay, or even advise one to stay in a place - with soviet-style old red rugs, cracked lobby windows - which locals and foreigners often use a rest-stop to satisfy their sexual needs bringing in prostitutes.

Why should it? Never heard of money-laundering?

It comes out that the news about Hyatt is not really a news Khushruz says that Hyatt hotel is already being built. That is strange.

“what’s going to happen to all these empty hotel rooms?”

I think if a luxurious hotel is there it does have to be full all the time. The important thing here is that, the city will be one step forward in its development.