Tourist flow to Almaty increases in 2012

Saltanat Omarova, director of state-run Almaty Tourism Information Center say the inflow of tourists to Almaty has been on the rise, Tengrinews.kz reports citing Interfax-Kazakhstan. “According to the Border Service, 186,420 tourists visited Kazakhstan in the first half of this year. The increase made 10% compared to the same period of 2011. The main part of visitors are arriving from Russia, China, Turkey, South Korea and Germany,” she said at a briefing held in Interfax-Kazakhstan Agency’s media center. According to Omarova’s data, Almaty tourist industry rendered service worth 17 billion tenge ($115 million) during the first half of 2012, including 675 million tenge ($4.6 million) worth of visa services and 326 million tenge ($2.2 million) worth of excursion services. Hotel booking services amounted to 15 billion tenge ($101.4 million). According to Omarova, Almaty city has joined the World Tourist Organization's Silk Road Project aimed at revitalizing tourism along the Silk Road. She added that Almaty Tourism Information Center planned “a lot of events, focused on the city’s PR”. Almaty is the biggest city of Kazakhstan with the population of over 1.5 million people.