Sugdiyon Hotel

We really enjoyed staying at Sugdian in Khujand. It’s close to major attractions, with plenty of restaurants nearby, so getting around the city was easy. The breakfast had lots of tasty choices each morning, and the accommodation was spotless, comfortable, and well maintained. It felt like home. The staff were warm and welcoming, though at times they could have been more attentive. Their hospitality still added a lot to our stay. We’d gladly come back to Sugdian on another visit.

Breakfast was excellent, and the cleaning staff were extremely nice. The rest of the experience was awful. I wouldn’t recommend this hotel to anyone. I couldn’t book through either Booking.com or the official site. On April 19 I tried twice and both bookings were automatically canceled. I asked why and got no reply, so I had to use the Russian site ostrovok and pay 38 euro instead of 360 somoni (or 30 euro) directly. I only got an answer on arrival: their booking system was out of order. It didn’t seem to be the only thing that was. At reception, the young man was extremely unpleasant. We were offered a room on the 8th floor with a nice view of the Syrdarya river, as I had asked for the superiorfloor. The water pressure was almost nonexistent, the water was only slightly warm, and the shower cabin leaked badly, leaving a puddle in the bathroom. I wrote that we were disappointed with the service, and then there was much ado about nothing. They offered another room on the 6th floor and tried to fix the hole in the shower cabin. I said we’d move there the next day after breakfast. That was fine, but after breakfast the room was already occupied. When we came back from our promenade, they had nothing else to offer on the 6th floor except a room by the elevator with dirty walls. The supervisor said it was NORMAL for the shower to leak and the water not to be hot, and that nobody had complained. Even with all these problems, we weren’t offered free swimming pool entry, for example. But there are men’s and women’s days. Most guests seemed to be from central Asia and perhaps these issues weren’t problems for them. I wouldn’t recommend the hotel to Europeans.

The location is the hotel’s one saving grace: it’s near the main tourist sites and has a great view of the Syr Darya River, assuming your room faces the river. The rooms, hotel, and service are well below standard. Mine smelled strongly of smoke despite the non-smoking sign, and there was no other room to move to because they were “full.” Breakfast was a struggle, served in a small area beside the lobby with too few seats and dozens of people trying to get something from the buffet. The three elevators also have an odd setup: each has its own call button. You have to press all three and see which arrives, and on the way down it stops at every floor because everyone else has done the same. Taking into account the quirks of hotels in this part of the world, this was still the worst hotel I’ve stayed in on my Central Asia trip. I’d look elsewhere if visiting Khujand, Tajikistan.

The check-in is poorly organized, and when there are lots of guests the staff get confused and slow. The hotel has no official star rating and doesn’t follow the star system. The rooms are very old. For a better view, try for an odd-numbered room on an upper floor. Otherwise you may face trash bins or the hotel itself. At 8:45 AM, as the video shows, breakfast was far from ideal. If cleanliness matters to you, bring your own sheets, since the ones provided are old and dirty.