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In 2013, Gulzat Tuleeva turned 36 and joined Kyrgyzstan’s Hospitality and Tourism Industry as a hotel operator. Like many other Kyrgyz women entrepreneurs, she waited until her children were older before starting her business.
Tuleeva runs a 12-room guesthouse known as Adamkaly along the main road in Kochkor, a city in central Kyrgyzstan’s mountainous Naryn province. Her hotel attracts year-round business guests from banks, government agencies and local businesses in addition to local and international tourists from May to September.
Although Tuleeva was enjoying success in her hotel business, she wanted to improve her bookkeeping skills and expand her business and profits. Because she kept track of her revenue by entering notes in a small notebook and did not record any disbursements, she lacked insightful financial information that would help her grow.
This changed in 2014, when Tuleeva and over 900 other women entrepreneurs entered USAID’s Women’s Leadership in Small and Medium Enterprises (WLSME) Program to receive training on hospitality, leadership, financial and business management, marketing and personnel management.
During her training, she entered and won a WLSME business competition. As a winner, she got assistance in setting up Excel files to track her sales, disbursements, cash flow and income. In addition, to improve bookkeeping and better analyze company data, she learned how to use the information in her guest register to identify patterns in travel purpose and booking source. Using her financial information and guest census from 2014, she created both a business plan and detailed marketing plan for 2015. Being a contest winner, she received a small grant that allowed her buy new furniture for the guest rooms.
Through the WLSME program, Tuleeva and her husband participated in study tours to successful hospitality facilities, hotels and travel firms in and around the Kyrgyzstan capital, Bishkek, to get new ideas and learn good practices for their business. After touring, they divided responsibilities in order to optimize their time and expand services. Now Tuleeva manages guesthouse operations while her husband organizes hunting, fishing, horseback riding, biking and hiking tours for guests.
Thanks to the WLSME program, Tuleeva has grown her guest list and increased her revenue 20%. Many guests find her hotel name which means good luck through Google Maps. Though the program ended in 2015, the need for resources to help women entrepreneurs remains. Please contact us to learn how you can help us meet this need.
