Almaty to have new bus fleet for tours

A new bus fleet for tours will be created in Almaty, Tengrinews.kz reports citing head of tourism department Bakhytzhan Zhulamanov. He named major problems of development of local tourism, including lack of comfortable buses, complicated visa procedures and their high cost, lack of information signs in Latin transcription (in English), imbalance between quality of services and their cost, etc. “The plan is to create a special bus fleet in the existing one or in the tourism department to service tourists. Now we need to decide how to implement the project,” Zhulamanov said. The official also stressed that Kazakhstan hotels and restaurants should start practicing discounts. “It is important to develop eco, ski and business tourism. According to the analysis, a business tourist spends 2-3 times more money than a normal tourist,” he said. According to Zhulamanov, 93 percent of Kazakhstan tourism falls on the business tourism. He added that 32 billion tenge ($216 million) worth of services were rendered in 2011, which is 2 billion tenge ($13.5 million) more than in 2010. A concept of promotion of Kazakhstan-made products at the international market has been created for development of local tourism.