The number of foreign tourist
arrivals is increasing in Kazakhstan, having doubled within a year. According
to the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Sports, more than 500,000 travelers
have visited the country since January, while about 300,000 people came in
2022. This figure is expected to reach 1.4 million people by year-end. At the
same time, the number of domestic tourists is also growing. According to the ministry’s
forecasts, the figure will amount to nine million people, while last year just
over three million Kazakh citizens traveled across the country.
“The growth in tourist numbers is an income for
the domestic tourism business, since hotels earned 100 billion tenge in six
months, which is 30 billion tenge more than last year. There are plans
that by the end of this year the state budget will be replenished by 400
billion tenge of tax revenues from tourism, which is twice as much compared to the
pre-crisis level of 2019,” said Yerzhan Yerkinbayev, Kazakh Vice Minister of
Tourism and Sports.
At the same time, as experts note, the number
of investments in the industry is also growing. Thus, over eight months
of this year, capital investments in the tourism sector amounted to 312 billion
tenge, which is a third more than for the same period in 2022, according to the
relevant ministry.
