Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
KAZAKHSTAN TRAVEL INDUSTRY AND ICT DIFFUSION
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Kazakhstan's travel industry
was integrated into the Soviet Union under Intourist (a contraction of the
Russian words for 'foreign tourist'). Intourist was responsible for manag-
ing the great majority of foreigners' access to, and travel within, the Soviet
Union and grew into one of the largest tourism organizations in the world.
Intourist also owned its own hotels, destinations and means of transport,
Travel Agencies, Tourist Offices and transport agency in one large enter-
prise. Sputnik was another big travel agency in the Soviet Union, respon-
sible for inbound and outbound youth tourism and Intourbureau was or-
ganizing the trips for trade unions' members. After the 1990s' perestroika,
those agencies left Kazakhstan and the tourism industry was left to de-
velop its own businesses and infrastructure.
The development of Kazakhstan's tourist industry began with so called
“shopping tours”—organized trips from Almaty, the former capital, to
Turkey, China, Emirates and Pakistan. Multiple travel agencies formed
spontaneously to organize charter trips, which led to further agencies
forming, and selling air tickets. These were mainly small businesses under
the auspices of banks and other corporate organizations to service their
own business-trip needs. So called “seasonal” tour companies also sprang
up to take domestic tourists to summer destinations such as Issuk Kul Lake
(Kyrgyzstan) or to winter attractions like the Medeo (Kazakhstan) skating
rink.
At that time there was no one official carrier and private airlines were
organizing charters and regular flights abroad. In February 2004 Air As-
tana became the national carrier after the government closed Air Kazakh-
stan. Currently they service 21 domestic and 23 international destinations.
The airline is a joint venture owned by the Government of the Republic of
Kazakhstan (who hold 51%) and BAE Systems of Britain (a British firm
of defense and airline contractors who hold 49%). Kazakhstan's private
airlines such as Scat and Sayakhat were left mainly with the niche market
servicing private clients, cargo or charter tours.
According to official statistics, there were 16.6 million tourists in Ka-
zakhstan in 2010. Twelve million were domestic and outbound tourists.
There are 1250 registered tourism businesses in Kazakhstan.
According to our original research data (Garkavenko et al., 2009a,
2009b, 2010a, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2012; Kadyrova et al., 2011) more
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