The Dome in the Pamir Mountains
Some moments stay with me far longer than the hotel budgets, RevPAR reports, or quarterly reviews I once spent so much time preparing.
This photograph captures one of those moments.
Just before the COVID pandemic, I stood high in the Pamir Mountains of Kyrgyzstan with the owner of a small guesthouse from Osh.
Behind us stretched one of the most remote landscapes I have ever visited.
The cold was unforgiving. Yet the atmosphere was filled with optimism.
The year before this owner had joined a study tour I organised in Italy.
The objective was straightforward: to explore how agritourism could create new opportunities for small hospitality businesses.
While others were interested in improving existing operations, he spoke about something entirely different.
He had a dream.
He wanted to build a dome lodge high in the mountains, on the road between Osh and the Tajik border.
The M41, more commonly known as the Pamir Highway (Russian: Памирский тракт, romanized: Pamirsky Trakt), is a road traversing the Pamir Mountains across Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, with a length of over 1,200 km.
It sounded ambitious.
The location was remote.
The operating season was short. Infrastructure was limited.
Most advisers would probably have started by listing the risks.
Instead, we spoke about possibilities.
Not because optimism replaces analysis, but because good analysis should never extinguish genuine ambition.
Despite COVID, despite the lack of infrastructure, and despite difficult financing, he made his dream come true.
The lodge generated year-round employment for local families.
Young people who might otherwise have left their villages for poorly paid work abroad could now build a future closer to home.
Visitors discovered one of the world’s most extraordinary mountain landscapes.
One entrepreneur’s determination had quietly changed a small part of his community.
That project reminded me why I entered hospitality in the first place.
Throughout my career, I became fascinated by numbers.
- Occupancy
- ADR
- RevPAR
- GOP and EBITDA flow-through
- Cash flow
- Governance
They all matter.
Without them, businesses struggle to survive. But they are not the purpose.
They are the justification.
The real purpose lies elsewhere.
A profitable hotel creates opportunities for owners to invest.
It creates stable employment. It gives young people careers. It supports suppliers. It pays taxes that, when used well, strengthen economies and communities.
It allows people to dream a little bigger than they otherwise could.
Whenever I review a hotel’s performance today, I still look at the numbers first.
But I try never to stop there.
Because somewhere behind every dashboard are people whose lives will be better—or worse—depending on the decisions those numbers help us make.
The dome in the Pamir Mountains reminded me that the most meaningful KPI is sometimes the one that never appears on any management report.
Thank you for reading my article.
I hope it has provided some food for thought, encouraged curiosity, and perhaps offered a different perspective on why governance matters.
About the Author
Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.
Website