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Holiday Merchants in association with Global Air Kazakhstan had recently organised a destination workshop themed ‘Kazakhstan-The Hidden Jewel’. The workshop was graced by Bulat Sarsenbayev, Ambassador, The Republic of Kazakhstan to India along with Vikas Khanduri, CEO, Holiday Merchants; Akmaral Yechshanova, Kazakhstan Tourism Board and Gulden Ospanova, Global Air Kazakhstan.
The Ambassador said, “We commenced our operations in India in 2014, since then the tourism has grown by 30-40%. To make it more convenient, we are going to simplify the visa regime. From January 2017, the Embassy is entitled to commence the process of issuing business visa. We are also awaiting an approval from our Indian counterparts on the draft of the agreement of the group visas, through which we can appoint some travel agencies or chambers to take care of the Kazakh representation in India.”
The tourism board of Kazakhstan is working towards increasing the frequency of flights from India to Kazakhstan and vice versa. Currently, Kazakhstan has seven flights a week from Almaty, Kazakhstan to Delhi. They aim to make it 9-10 flights a week; add Astana to its network, and later on to another destination in Kazakhstan.
According to the statistics issued by the Indian government and informed by the Ambassador more than 16,000 tourists have visited India from Kazakhstan in 2015-16. On the other hand, the number of Indian travellers to Kazakhastan was 8,000 for the year 2015-16; and 10,000 visitors for 11 months so far (2016).
Vikas Khanduri, CEO, Holiday Merchants, said, “Having partnered with Global Air for this event with the support of Embassy of Kazakhstan in India, we have launched special packages for our Indian travellers to Almaty. Having lot of requests for central Asian countries- Kazakhstan being the highest in demand especially in the MICE segment, we have partnered with tour operators in Kazakhstan to commence the tourism practices to and fro.”
Beyond improving their flight frequency and policies in visa, the Embassy is working towards introducing E-Visa facility. They will also host an exhibition expo titled ‘Future Energy’, for business travellers catering to the MICE market.
Source: travelnewsdigest.in