COMPETITIVENESS OF TOURISM INDUSTRY IN KAZAKHSTAN - Tourism in Central Asia: Cultural Potential and Challenges - page 36

passing tourism legislation and committing to development programs.
Public policies are directed at improving the business environment, mar-
keting strategy, public-private partnership, promoting tourism cluster ini-
tiatives and effective implementation of already approved programs and
policies in the tourism industry.
The surveyed tourism firms provided valuable information on the is-
sues and challenges that the tourism industry faces in Kazakhstan today,
such as poor tourism infrastructure, roads, and service quality, lack of rel-
evant knowledge in tourism related fields, lack of advertising the tour-
ism potential within the country and around the world. They believe that
eliminating barriers such as visa obtaining procedures, and providing in-
centives for innovations and knowledge development can also contribute
to the growth of inbound and domestic tourism, which are prioritized in
Kazakhstan. The study also supports Porter's theory that innovativeness
and interactions among the tourism cluster actors result in competitive
advantages for the firms.
In future study it is interesting to explore the relationship between CSR
and competitiveness of the firm. Jespersen, Kothuis and Tran (2012) argue
that there is little knowledge on the meaning of CSR for small and medi-
um size enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries: the data on CSR and
competitiveness for SMEs are scarce providing only anecdotal evidence
of the relationship between CSR and competitiveness, e.g., Singh, Garg
and Deshmukh (2008) and Luken and Stares (2005) found a positive rela-
tionship between CSR and competitiveness. Our study also demonstrates
correlation between the percentage of firms involved in CSR activities
(from 48% in 2009 to 52% in 2011) and international competitiveness of
the country.
In the context of the reviewed literature and the results of the present
study the following recommendations for further development of the com-
petitive tourism industry can be made:
• improve tourism infrastructure (hotels, resorts, roads, etc.);
• use incentives to foster international standards of management and
service quality;
• improve quality of specialized education by creating new syllabi
with an emphasis on the needs of the tourism industry; arrange re/
training for tourism staff;
• encourage collaboration among tourism cluster participants towards
achievement of mutually beneficial goals and objectives in effective
and efficient ways;