Betsy’s Hotel Is All Booked in Former Soviet Republic : Entrepreneurship: Businesswoman finds a job-generating niche, with dollars due in advance.
At Betsy’s hotel in this capital city, it’s cash up front in U.S. greenbacks, please. But business is so good that double rooms at $100 a night are booked weeks in advance.
*
Undaunted by war and want in Georgia, Betsy Haskell from Baltimore has proved you don’t have to be a corporate giant to do business in one of the former Soviet Union’s most violent trouble spots.
Dressed in a navy suit, with smoke trailing in arcs around her head from a cigarette that climbed and dived in her energetic hands, Haskell explained her success as the head of a realty firm and hotel.
“Despite the fact I’m not going to tell you how old I am,” Haskell said, her tough drawl redolent of Lauren Bacall, “I do think the fact that I’m not young, and that I’m a woman, and that I’m an American helps me.”
Haskell first came to Georgia, then a Soviet republic, in 1991 at the invitation of then-President Zviad Gamsakhurdia while she was working for the Washington-based American Council for Young Political Leaders.
It was turbulent in Georgia. A gun was thrust in Haskell’s stomach by one of Gamsakhurdia’s bodyguards before her first meeting with the leader, shortly before he was ousted from power.
Wanting to do something “substantive” in Georgia and not put off by the gunfire that rattled Tbilisi every night, Haskell set up a real estate company as international aid agencies swarmed into the capital, all of them looking for apartments and office space.
“From the beginning, it’s been a success,” said Haskell, a little surprised herself.
Her hotel, called simply Betsy’s, was born out of a plea from the U.S. Embassy in Georgia, which was looking for somewhere safe to put up visiting State Department employees.
Other hostels were deemed off limits after threats and shooting incidents in the lobbies from gun-toting paramilitary-types. Many hotels also were crowded with refugees.
“It seemed a good opportunity to start a new business so we did, in two weeks,” said Haskell.
Running the hotel, she has had to battle with the challenges every ordinary Georgian faces, such as regular power outages and dire communications.
“The problems of power, water, the telephone systems, food,” she sighed. “It’s really serious and the fact that there’s no credit--everything is cash up front.”
Still, Betsy’s is always full.
There’s “good food and probably more important than that, an excellent forum for discussing the various problems Georgia has,” said Jim Rossner, an American businessman seated in a comfy armchair surrounded by gorgeous Oriental carpets.
Haskell, who directly employs 20 people and gives regular work to other fledgling businesses, now has the idea of opening an upscale club this fall. But she warned, “The business scene here is still in flux.”
She is pinning her hopes on Georgian leader Eduard A. Shevardnadze in presidential elections this November and on the multimillion-dollar oil pipeline that will be routed through Georgia, according to official announcements this week.
“If the pipeline comes through and Shevardnadze is reelected, then there’s no question,” Haskell said excitedly.
“Business will boom.”
