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Kazakhstan: The Yellow Brick Road to Sustainable Tourism
Sunday, 27 Oct, 2010
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Astana New City on the Steppe
Will Kazakhstan avoid the mass tourism trap with a heady mix of new airports, gambling and ecotourism?
The enormous and oil-rich Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan see:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan isn’t sparing a penny in its drive to become THE major regional tourism hub. With Russia, China and India all just 4 hours away by jet, big, rich and eager markets lie very close to this massive, sparsely-populated, land-locked state.
The world’s 9th largest country, bigger than Western Europe, has a population smaller than Holland’s, but a deep and colourful heritage in keeping with its size and unique position between East and West.
The Kazakhs are deeply protective of their history, culture and environment and very keen on taking the sustainable tourism path to protect it. However, mass tourism’s big bucks are terribly attractive to a country that’s only been open for business for less than 20 years.
From the flat, bare steppe to the Altay mountains, the country’s geography could hardly be more diverse incorporating tremendous sea-size lakes, year-round snow-capped peaks, even a canyon said to be more spectacular that Arizona’s Grand Canyon.
The country’s culture is no less impressive. It is said that the horse was first habituated here and every Kazakh reveres the animal, enjoying a splendid variety of unique equestrian games. And, because of Kazakhstan’s unique position at the extreme west of Central Asia, bordered by superpowers Russia and China, and Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and on the Silk Road trade route, the country’s history is complex and colourful to say the least.
There is also an extraordinarily wide variety of food and drink. The apple was originally discovered in this area, fat fruity grapes are grown and it was here also that the tulip was originally found. Markets are full to bursting with an enormous range of unusual fruits and vegetables, jams, honeys and meats.
So, Kazakhstan has a cornucopia of undeveloped ecotourism opportunities. Although there is hardly a sophisticated tourism infrastructure, the potential for a wide variety of value-added niche activities, including farm and home stays, horse trekking, walking and mountain climbing, nature trails, botanic holidays, ski-trekking, winter sports and many other activities abound. Packaged into sustainable offers, these sorts of holidays would deliver economic benefits directly into rural areas. Locals and tourists alike could also share in Kazakhstan’s cultural and social wealth.
But low impact tourism does not deliver quick-fix high impact, high profile financial benefits whereas massive developments do.
So Kazakhstan is trying to catch both big prizes, hoping that they are not mutually exclusive. The scale of its developments reflect the bigness of the country, the size of its ambitions and the enormous opportunities that are available.
Knowing that such opportunities are fleeting, Kazakhstan is moving rapidly to grasp proffered partnerships and gain a regional first mover advantage.
Just the top four current mega-resort developments Illustrate the scale envisaged – these alone will provide well over 100,000 beds, translating into over 5-10 million tourists a year:
- In 2011, the Asian winter games is scheduled to be held in Almaty see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Asian_Winter_Games The high grade winter sports destinations of Medeu and Shymbaluk are superbly located ex Soviet resorts that are undergoing complete refurbishment to provide a showcase for Kazakh tourism. New venues being built here include a multipurpose Sports Palace which will seat up to 15,000 spectators, a ski jump complex, a biathlon stadium, and an athlete village. And, of course, thousands of new hotel beds in every grade. The Kazakh state has reportedly allocated up to US$1bn for redevelopment.
- Kendirli Resort on the Caspian Sea – It must be a good place, the president has a villa there! Upscale beach tourism, first phase involves 20,000 beds. www.panoramio.com/photo/4558175
- Burabay Resort www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php on lake Burabay is another revamped soviet-style holiday resort that is being dramatically upgraded and expanded with the assistance of a major Swiss developer another 20,000+ beds.
- OZ – a second Las Vegas in Kazakhstan. Imagine a major international airport with two runways, a scaled-up Epcot with seven of the world’s iconic cities (Venice, San Francisco etc), a top notch racetrack plus up to 1,000 restaurants, 80,000 hotel beds, a tourism school and 275,000 residences all fuelled by 25 casinos. Even if these projections are well off – it certainly will be big! See exclusive interview with the US-based developer, Mark Advent www.travelmole.tv/watch_vdo.php
“Cinderella” rural tourism is still highly undeveloped and very small-scale in Kazakhstan. Although the Kazakhs have a deep tradition of hospitality, this has not yet translated into an ecotourism industry although it should have very opportunity to do so if given the appropriate support.
Eco-tourism.kz www.eco-tourism.kz has had a tiny amount of financial support from Exxon Mobil, the oil company . The organisation’s 80 or 90 homestays provide its major income and activity but as they frequently don’t have running water and are largely unaware of western tourists’ needs (eg non-meat breakfasts), the industry still has a long way to go.
Ecotourism therefore provides a dramatic contrast to the burgeoning mass tourism industry development. The challenge is that sustainable tourism could be drowned out and die through lack of finance and interest.
The hope is that mass tourism will provide the stimulus for ecotourism growth or at least an opportunity for small private sector Kazakh companies and individuals to benefit from inbound tourists’ spend.
As it is, the level of mass tourism envisaged holds every danger of commodifying Kazakh culture and developing a major industry with little or no benefit for the local population.
The underlying problem of mass tourism development can be a destructive cocktail of horribly low paid employment, environmental degradation, social disintegration, prostitution, crime and massive financial leakages to tax havens. We’ve seen it all before.
The passing glance at Kazakh ecotourism needs to be formalised into a cohesive arrangement so that locally-beneficial projects can feed off the mass tourism arrivals as is now the case in many big destination projects pioneered by the travel foundation www.thetravelfoundation.org.uk/. Even then you can be sure that tourism concern www.tourismconcern.org.uk, if it survives, will keep its beady eye on developments.
The key is political pressure from within Kazakhstan and in source markets for true value added high yield tourism to develop the sustainable economic and social benefits that are available.
Valere Tjolle
Get free sustainable tourism reports from Vision on Sustainable Tourism HERE
Valere Tjolle is editor of the Sustainable Tourism Report Suite: EXTRA SPECIAL OFFER at: www.travelmole.com/stories/1144873.php
Valere
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