History Tiara Tours, Gardi Tours, Tiara Guesthouse and Tiara Resort

Tiara Tours, Netherlands
Tiara Tours is a Dutch touroperator, specialising in special tours with a great deal of adventure. Our destinations are mainly eastern Europe, Russia, Mongolia, China and the rest of Northeast Asia. Tiara Tours was founded in 1994.

Our core business is organisation of Trans Siberian Express and Trans Mongolian Express tours. Tiara Tours averagely brings some 2.000 travellers to Mongolia each year, maily by Trans Mongolian Express train. It is a growing market with turnover increasing at least 20% yearly. Not bad, considering the fact that Tiara Tours works with a relatively low marketing budget.

Nevertheless, organising of tours to Mongolia (and Trans Mongolian Express in particular) proves far from easy. Trains on the Trans Mongolian route trains usually are fully booked, making it hard to obtain significant amounts of tickets. Furthermore, Russia and Mongolia are not the easiest countries to organize tours to, regarding problems like bureaucracy, corruption, expensive hotels (in Russia) and poor knowledge of hospitality and customer service.

Gardi Tours, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
After a few years, the increasing number of clients in combination with the problems just mentioned increased the demand for a better representation in Mongolia. In order to safeguard growth, stability and improvement of service, Tiara Tours seeked to establish representation in Mongolia together with a strong local Mongolian partner. Thus, in 1998, Gardi Tours was founded.

Gardi Tours proved a succes; it quickly became an established tour operator with a wide range of tours to all corners of Mongolia. Actually, the company grows even faster than Tiara Tours. Gardi now handles not only all of Tiara Tours' clients, it is also a trusted partner of tour operators from Scaninavia and Germany.

Tiara Guesthouse, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
In 2005, Gardi Tours proudly opened a new hostel-like accommodation: Tiara Guesthouse - Cheap, Clean, Comfortable & Cosy! The guesthouse, which can accommodate up to 48 budget travellers, neighbours Gardi Tours' office. Guests of the guesthouse can therefore enjoy a wide range of excursion and (join-in) tours, simply booked next door. Tiara Guesthouse has a very good location on a five-minute walk from Ulaanbaatar's central railway station.

Tiara Resort, Terelj National Park, Mongolia
In 2003, Tiara Resort co. Ltd., was founded. We, the founders, were able to buy 3 hectare of land in Terelj. The first stage of the resort was realised with completion of a ger camp, counting 23 gers, providing real Mongolian accommodation for a maximum of 60 people. A traditional palace Ger was erected to serve as restaurant/café. Guests make use of clean toilets, showers and washing bins, located in the modern sanitary block (with heating) on the premises.

The tourism season in Mongolia, apart from Ulaanbaatar of course, is relatively short due to its climate. Harsh, cold weather actually limits the season to around 15 weeks, roughly starting at the end of April, lasting until the end of september. We, though, wanted to serve Western and Japanese tourists and expats all year round.
Breaking the "climate barrier" was to be all but easy, considering winter temperatures in Terelj not rarely drop to minus 40 degrees Celsius. The plan was to construct a proper resort hotel, extended with comfortable mountain villa accommodation. The resort was to have a full range of facilities among which a swimming pool.
In 2004, our Mongolian business partner arranged the paperwork, permits etc. to build the holiday resort, next to the existing ger camp in Terelj National Park.

The resort is nearing its completion and will be officially opened in september 2007.