EXPO-2017 facilities will be used along Olympic village principles

EXPO-2017 facilities should be used along Olympic village principles, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev suggested at the meeting on organization of the global exhibition. “The work of EXPO-2017 fund has to be a continuous one. It is important is to think in advance about the future use of the facilities that we will be constructing now. The use should be arranged in line with the Olympic village principle. Everything we build should be used. We can sell some of the buildings afterwards. It we build hotels we can turn them into apartment buildings for people after the exhibition. That’s what we have to think about,” the President said. Considering the big load on hotels, Nursultan Nazarbayev instructed to build several new hotels in Astana. Earlier Senator Gani Kassymov raised the issue of use of EXPO facilities after the exhibition. He suggested to turn them into a Disneyland-like amusement park. “EXPO is a big opportunity for development of tourism. We have things we can show our guests, but everything has to be presented in a right way. We have to start preparing now and think about the tourist routes not only in Astana but also in the whole Kazakhstan. There will be so many people here… We have to send them somewhere. We have to understand that a flow of 5 million people in 3 months is not an easy task. It requires experience and knowledge of this mechanism. That’s why we have to prepare beforehand. That’s why the government has to review the tourism program. We also have to start training personnel, teach them languages, Kazakhstan history and prepare them ideologically. We also have to clean up the sights and think of comfortable ways of delivering people to them,” the President said. Nazarbayev advised his government to study the experience of combining shopping and business tourism in such countries as Malaysia and the UAE.