Ministry of Culture and Sports estimated that the national parks of Kazakhstan may receive about 2 million visits by the end of 2022, Qazmonitor reports citing the ministry's press service.
About two weeks ago, Deputy Prime Minister Yeraly Tugzhanov noted the positive prospects of domestic tourism given the increase in visitors to the national parks in the first half of 2022. Minister of Culture and Sports Yerzhan Yerkinbayev added that about 700,000 foreign tourists are expected to visit by the end of 2022.
In the same meeting, Minister Yerkinbayev had given an estimate of the total attendance to national parks in 2022 to make up 1.6 million visitors. Now the number is up to 2 million.
7 million in 2021
The culture and sports ministry released a report on the interim indicators for tourism in the first half of 2022. In 2021, Kazakhstan reached a record number of domestic tourists - almost 7 million people. The number of domestic tourists served by accommodations increased 21.5% to 1.13 million. The accommodation facilities provided services worth 26.3 billion tenge, which is 25.7% more compared to Q1 2021.
No less than 11,000 foreign tourists came to the country every week during this period.
Kazakhstan also did pretty well in global rankings of tourism. According to a 2021 report by the World Economic Forum, Kazakhstan improved its position and took 66th place among 117 countries (in 2019, it was in 80th place out of 140).
The country was highly rated on indicators, such as "Price Competitiveness" (1st place), "Seasonality of Tourism" (26th place), "Natural Resources" (33rd place), and "Number of UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Sites" (42nd place).
Visits to the national parks
In the first half of 2022, around 550,000 people visited the Shchuchinsko-Borovsky resort area, which is almost 2 times more compared to the same period last year.
About 240,000 people visited "Shymbulak" in the summer season. This is almost 90,000 more than last year's summer season. (Exact numbers will be released after the season is over.)
Taking into account the ongoing relaunches of domestic and international flights and the development of tourist infrastructure and travel programs, the government hopes to see continuous growth in numbers.
