CIM ON SITE. ONE PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Polishing up old gems

“Buchara is going to become a world-famous tourist destination!“ This is what Andrea Leuenberger has resolved, and the tourism expert is going full speed ahead to make it happen. Buchara, one of the historic cities along the Great Silk Road in Uzbekistan, can boast of madrasahs, mosques and mausoleums that are even more magnificent than many other cultural monuments in Asia. Until now, however, travellers stopping in Buchara mostly had to stay far from the old city, either in ugly hotel blocks left over from the Soviet era or in dreary, uncomfortable bed-and-breakfast accommodation with surroundings that in no way met their expectations. Then came Andrea Leuenberger. She explained to Uzbek hotel owners what kind of standards western tourists expect and why the faded plastic lace curtains had to go. “Andrea tells us how we can arouse the visitors’ enthusiasm for our superb thousand-year-old cultural treasures,” explains hotel owner Gulfiya Abdouraupova, Chair of the Buchara Tourism Association of private hotels and small-scale tourism enterprises. CIM expert Leuenberger is editor-in-chief of Discovery Central Asia magazine. She sees that websites are brought up to standard and gives advice to restaurant owners, souvenir sellers, taxi drivers and craftspersons – in short, anyone who wants to make their way in tourism. She has worked in the tourism sector herself since 1990 – in Geneva, New York and Damascus. In Buchara she has learned to have faith in the future: “In Uzbekistan, opportunity is everywhere.”