PERCEPTIONS OF FOREIGN INVESTORS ON THE TOURISM MARKET IN CENTRAL ASIA - Tourism in Central Asia: Cultural Potential and Challenges - page 308

INTRODUCTION
Central Asia (CA) has a rich history, to which numerous tribes and
nationalities have contributed over the last 2500 years. A vital factor
in the history of the southern part of the region was its location astride
the most direct trade route between China and Europe, the so called
Silk Route which began to develop in the Roman times (Buyers, 2003;
Akayev, 2001). CA countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmeni-
stan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan—contain a large and rich untapped
tourism market that has great potential for foreign tourism investors
and in particular for Turkish tourism investors. At the same time CA,
as a new destination, has been gaining importance in the travel and
tourism international market (Ghosh et al., 2003a, 2003b; Jeffries, 2003;
Jenkins, 1997; Qu and Zhang, 1997).
This chapter examines the foreign investors' perceptions of general
investment, tourism specific investment, and sustainability investment
consideration factors in four of the five CA states (CAS) of Kazakh-
stan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Due to a lack of
tourism information and infrastructure Tajikistan was excluded from
this research. The s t u d y also tested if overall investment conditions
of the four CAS can be explained as a function of general investment,
tourism specific investment, and tourism sustainable investment consid-
eration factors.
After the collapse of USSR in 1991, the five Soviet Republics of
CA were faced for the first time with the prospect of existence as inde-
pendent states (Culpan and Akcaoglu, 2003; Curtis, 2003a and 2003b;
Gurgen, 2000; Nowak and Steagall, 2003). CA is being touted as terribly
significant to the entire world (Buyers, 2003). The five CA countries
occupy a territory of some 3,994,400 km 2 and have a total population
of nearly 60 million (Gleason, 2003). The region stretches from the Cas-
pian Sea in the west, to China in the east, and from central Siberia in the
north to Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan in the south (Buyers, 2003). Ka-
zakhstan, the largest of the four, occupies 2.7 million km 2 with a popu-
lation of 14.8 million (2001) (Curtis, 2003a, 2003b). Kyrgyzstan occupies
198,500 km 2 and has a population of 5 million (2001). Turkmenistan
has a landm a s s of 488,100 km 2 with a population of 5.5 million and
Uzbekistan occupies 447,400 km 2 with a total population of 25.1 mil-
lion inhabitants (2001) (Gleason, 2003). One of the main examples of