# Mongolia Tourism Strategy



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Poor Mongolia turns to tourism but stumbles in a crucial year *
By CHARLES HUTZLER 
13 July 2006

ULAN BATOR, Mongolia (AP) - When Mongolia decided to throw a party and invited the world, it left out an essential element: beds. 

Hotels in the capital of the remote country have been fully booked, not just for celebrations of the 800th anniversary of conqueror Genghis Khan's enthronement this past week, but for most of the summer tourist season. Flights to the city's modest airport too. 

Tour companies trying to capitalize on the event have resorted to novel solutions. Anne Stevenson-Yang, a Beijing-based Internet entrepreneur, and her family of four found themselves staying in the one-room apartment of the tour operator's brother. 

"The brother took his kids to stay in a yurt," she said, referring to the traditional dome tents the Mongols call gers. 

In what was billed as a crucial year for a poor country, Mongolia has stumbled in developing a fledgling tourism industry. The 16-year-old democracy is tripping over its yearnings to integrate with the world and its inexperience wrought from decades of communist isolation and enduring poverty. 

A government-backed committee set up to promote the anniversary overseas got off to a late start, mounting major events in Europe and East Asia only this spring and apparently making little impact, a tourism official said. The hordes of expected tourists that prompted the U.S. Embassy to warn Americans away from visiting never materialized. 

"The Mongolian government's promotion of the 800-year anniversary was minimal," said Rick Idema, a Dutch expatriate married to a Mongolian, who runs Tserentours Co. "At least half of my customers came here not knowing anything about" the anniversary, he said. 

The glitches are a reminder of Mongolia's remoteness. The Alaska-size country has 2.8 million people, a third of them nomadic herders living on vast, rolling grasslands. The capital, on the frigid Siberian steppe, is said to be the world's coldest. The entire city has only 2,000 guest beds in hotels, guesthouses and tourist camps of domed gers. 

"Our infrastructure for receiving tourists is not so big," said Baigal Lkhagvasuren, a tourism promotion officer in the Ministry of Roads, Transport and Tourism. Baigal said the government's aim is to promote eco-tourism, playing off the country's beauty and unique culture. 

But the stakes are high for a country eager for a bigger share of world tourism revenues and for new sources of growth. The economy is overly reliant on mining of copper and other minerals, and the Western-leaning democratic government is facing protests to improve the lives of the third of the population who live in poverty. 

Ulan Bator, a city which in its current form was largely laid out by Soviet planners, is groaning under the strains of capitalism and democracy. The population has soared to around 1 million, from less than 600,000 four years ago, drawing in swarms from the countryside. Many of the newcomers live in sprawling squatter communities of gers and wooden homes on the city's edge that burn coal for heat, dig pits for latrines and have no access to running water. 

"The air is polluted, the water is polluted, the soil is polluted," said Otgonbayar Galbadrakh, a housing and community planner for a joint project between the city and the U.N.'s housing and urban planning agency. "These ger communities are surrounding the center of the city and are the direct source of the pollution." 

Then there's competition from economically muscular China, whose adjacent territory of Inner Mongolia is also promoting Genghis Khan as a tourist draw. The region attracted 1 million overseas tourists last year, more than the 400,000 who visited Mongolia. 

Mongolia's struggle to keep up in the global competition has troubled its political leadership. "The whole world is ruled by the necessity of being fast, by having a good idea and then realizing it," President Nambaryn Enkhbayar told reporters last Monday. 

A star attraction of the festivities, a new 6 billion tugrik (US$5 million) monument to Genghis Khan, wasn't finished in time for its unveiling by Enkhbayar on Monday. Part of the trouble was the organizing committee's failure to arrange prompt payment to the Chinese company supplying the monument's polished stone, an organizer told local reporters. 

Three of the city's best hotels were forced to cancel bookings by major tour operators after the government ordered them to make rooms available for foreign dignitaries, said Baigal, the tourism official. 

The government even managed to displease many Mongolians. Ticket prices for many events at a traditional sports festival that coincided with the anniversary events were a pricey 10,000 tugrik (US$8.50; euro6.75). Some who shelled out the money turned up at Central Stadium only to be refused entry because police said they had bought counterfeit tickets, local station Eagle TV reported. 

"We don't plan things," said Munkh-Ochir Dorjjugder, a Defense Ministry analyst who did postgraduate research at a U.S. Naval institute in Monterey, Calif. 

A recent government tourism initiative has widened the scope for foreign investment. Major international hoteliers have responded. Shangri-la Hotels and Resorts is building a 190-bed hotel in the city center and Hilton Hotels Corp. has agreed to manage a new hotel nearby. But they open in 2007 and 2008. 

"For today's capacity, we did as best as we could," Baigal said. 

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Reporter Ganbat Namjil contributed to this report.


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## Mamino Zlato (Feb 18, 2006)

400,000 tourists isn't bad. Good to hear something about Mongolia, it's probably one of the least-known countries in the world. You never hear anything about it.


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