Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
graduates bring back international trends to the country. One such trend is
online commerce and business. One online travel business owner believes
that even now the country has a market for online commerce—in young
people, the well-traveled and the well-off, white-collar strata. However,
the majority of TAs believes that there is no demand for on-line services;
they believe marketing is not essential; this is especially true in family-
run small TA with loyal clientele. Regarding prospective consumers, TAs
think that clients differ in terms of ICT readiness, but it can be taken as
true that a traveler is more sophisticated and Internet savvy nowadays and
is likely to do a lot of research on the Internet.
The data on ICT adoption by TA in Kazakhstan is summarized in Table 1.
TABLE 1
TA—ICT adoption.
ICT adoption
Status
Connection to global systems
No GDS/CRS for the majority of TAs
Internet use
Mainly for e-mails, rudimentary web presence
ICT perception
No demand for on-line services
Overall ICT adoption
Low
There are several big travel operators such as KazTour (Kazakh
owned), Tez Tour (Russia/Ukraine), Zhana Nur (Kazakh ownership), On
Travel (with Bulgarian ownership) and Gulnar Tour (Kazakh/Turkish
ownership). The characteristic feature of Kazakhstan's Tourist Operator
business is to sell directly to consumers. Operators normally do not have
any agency agreement with travel agents, although an exception is Tez
Tour from Russia. Its relationships are more structured—they work with
and sell tours only through travel agencies. This more structural approach
earns them loyalty from their agents. Tez Tour forms packages in every
country they work—they have branches in Turkey, for instance. Tez Tour
also has its own airplane (Sky Bus) and performs charter flights. They
also brought to Kazakhstan “last minute” packages with low prices. The
Internet adoption is reasonably high especially in TO with foreign par-
ticipation—Kaztour, Tez Tour, Gulnar Tour, Zhana Nur, On Travel. ICT
adoption by Kazakhstan TO is summarized in Table 2.
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