The luxury Hotel Monec certainly gives those visitors a reason to stay in the Turkish capital longer since they are welcomed there not as clients but as guests, according to General Manager K. Değer Duru.
In an interview with Today's Zaman, Duru talked about his experience, starting as an employee in a hotel and working his way up to general manager of several others, and the mixed combination of opportunities and challenges of administering a luxury hotel in a capital like Ankara.
Hotel Monec is located very close to Ankara's most-visited locations, be they political, historic or trade centers. It brings well-appointed rooms, high-quality service and reasonable prices together for its guests, which is why it has been host to hundreds of distinguished Turkish and non-Turkish public figures since it first opened for service only a year ago. Monec has 18 standard rooms, 29 suites and three king suites. It is located on the highest, greenest peak in Ankara from which its guests have an unobstructed view of the city.
Much potential undeveloped in the Turkish capital
The untapped potential of Ankara is one of the main things Monec's top manager underlined during the interview. He said Turks are known for their hospitality but that is not enough to attract the desired volume of visitors to the capital. The promotion of Ankara has not been done as well as it could have been and much potential is left unexploited. “Well, at the end of day, hospitality and promotion are two different things but should go hand-in-hand. What I am talking about here is systematic and planned moves to introduce the richness of our culture and our capital, too,” he said.
“Ankara is certainly a focus of attention for so many in the world because of the country's strategic position in the wider region in which it is situated, including the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. But, unfortunately, people coming to the capital for various purposes only stay here for short periods. They just come and go because they do not know about the opportunities for tourism in the city,” Duru said, adding that neighboring townships such as Beypazarı and Nallıhan as well as downtown Ankara should be promoted to the outside world.
“Look, for example, at Beypazarı -- the town is poorly known not only to foreigners but also to Turkish citizens. If people knew they could have visited a real historic, authentic town close to Ankara, they would stay here for another day,” he argued. Beypazarı is located northwest of Ankara, less than 100 kilometers from the city center. It is known to be a destination on the historic Silk Road, with its houses reflecting authentic old Turkish architecture. The town is also home to the rare art of Telkari, a delicate type of silver work produced by talented master craftsmen.
As capitals of old Anatolian civilizations, such as the Phrygian and the Hittite, Gordion and Hattusa are two of the examples Duru mentioned as unexploited sites located near Ankara that need much better promotion. The problem in the capital, however, cannot be reduced to a lack of promotion since there is also the problem of lack of interest in preserving the history of the city. The Temple of Augustus and the Roman baths are two such examples in that regard, standing back-to-back in Ankara's Ulus district. “I do not know if this is still the case now, but five years ago, students from the nearby high school were taking rocks from these two sites and bringing them to their schoolyard to sit on. I just cannot help but question how that was possible in the 2000s,” said Duru. According to him, if such deficiencies can be remedied and the city is presented in a more effective way, Ankara will swiftly become a tourist destination.
Duru believes that fair and convention centers would also contribute to increase the number of visits to Ankara. “One does not have to travel abroad to see a model venue for fairs and conventions. Take İstanbul for instance. There are at least four fairs in the metropolitan city each month and each fair normally takes four to five days. That means thousands of people coming both from within and outside Turkey and staying during that time. I think Ankara is in dire need of such centers so that organizers can choose the capital as an alternative,” he proposed.
‘Half-day city tour an insult to Ankara’
Ankara only receives a small slice of the tourism pie in Turkey despite its own attractions and its proximity to several popular tourist sites in the surrounding area. Cappadocia is, for example, only three hours away from Ankara by bus, a reality that worries Duru since that opportunity is not used to boost tourism in the Turkish capital either. “There are, in fact, package tours for sightseeing in Ankara and then traveling to Cappadocia, but the tour here takes only half a day. Thousands of visitors each year do not even stay a single night here. They just spend six to eight hours, and the country's capital is done. It is, for me, an insult to the place I live. It is a confession on the part of the organizers that we have a terrible capital. Well, Ankara certainly deserves much more than that,” he said.
He also pointed out the potential of health tourism in Ankara. Since each year many foreigners as well as Turks travel to the city for medical operations, health tourism is another source of inbound visitors for the Turkish capital. “We have wonderful hospitals and excellent doctors. That is why there are a really high number of visitors, primarily from European and Scandinavian countries in particular, where people with high incomes are looking for ways to recover their health. Imagine a man who comes here for dental surgery. This is not an operation that imprisons the visitor in hospital. With a little bit of better promotion, his stay could turn into a happy holiday, too. We just need to think about these opportunities first. There really is much to do here in Ankara.”
However, the undeveloped potential of Ankara is not the only reason for Duru's discontent. The difficulty hotels have finding qualified personnel is another source of displeasure for him.
Duru studied in Turkey until he moved to Germany for language education from where he traveled to and then resided in Switzerland to study at college. His years abroad taught him a great deal and aroused an enthusiasm in him to return to his homeland with the hope that he would find opportunities to practice what he had learnt abroad. However, he was mature enough to accept starting right at the bottom to work his way up in the sector. His career, in which he started out as a hotel employee and then a receptionist, has led to him becoming Hotel Monec's general manager.
Complaining about the attitudes of new graduates who he has interviewed in his capacity as the top manager of a handful of hotels, Duru said they immediately demand managerial posts and do not seem to accept anything lower than that. “What we, as managers, actually look for is experience when interviewing people for such posts and this is unfortunately what so many candidates, mostly those just out of college, certainly lack. Being a manager requires a great deal of experience and learning by seeing with your own eyes. This includes the kitchen, room service, laundry and the like. They somehow assume that they can manage these units without having any knowledge of how they operate on the ground. What they learn at school does not really count as an input that will yield immediate gains there,” he explained.
Stationary economy left behind
Nonetheless, Hotel Monec's top manager is hopeful about the future since after the March 29 local elections, he said, the stalemate in the economy has disappeared, and they have started to see a strong revival. “People's trust in the economy has recovered considerably since then. Through the quality service we provide our guests, we believe that Monec only sustained light damage from the financial crunch and its resultant stagnant economy. Since the end of March, that effect has disappeared, and we are presently looking to take advantage of the opportunities available in this important capital,” he added.
Taking into account the fact that he is running one of the best hotels in the city and considering that Monec's clients are seen as guests, the hospitality side of the equation is guaranteed. All that is now needed is for Ankara to be better promoted as a city.
Promotion vs. hospitality
K. Değer Duru manages one of the best hotels in Ankara and emphasizes that hospitality and promotion should go hand-in-hand. According to him, it is a shame that Ankara plays host to fewer tourists than several other European capitals when Turks are known for their hospitality and the Turkish state is such an important player in the wider region of the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans and the Mediterranean.
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