East Kazakhstan region to develop food tourism
The event was opened by Rashid Kuzembayev, Chairman of the Management Board at Kazakh Tourism NC JSC, and Zhassulan Sarsebayev, Head of the East Kazakhstan Regional Department for Tourism and Foreign Relations.
Rashid Kuzembayev told about the company's activities such as ITB Eurasia to be held in Astana next year, and also presented the results of expeditions to 20 natural sites.
Last summer, Kazakh Tourism organized a large-scale expedition "Uly Dala Yeline Sayakhat" ("Journey the Country of the Great Steppe") covering almost all of the most interesting tourist attractions in Kazakhstan, and in August 2018, the expedition members traveled along one of the most beautiful regions of Kazakhstan along the route ‘Altai - the Cradle of Civilization'.
Timur Duissengaliyev, Deputy Chairman of the Management Board, presented the concept of the festival ‘Altai - the Cradle of Civilizations'. The concept of the festival reflects the idea outlined in the Head of State's recent article ‘Seven Facets of the Great Steppe', in which Nursultan Nazarbayev points out that "... It was here, in the middle of the 1st millennium, where the Turkic world was born, and a new milestone was reached in the Great Steppe..."
The main goal of the festival is to popularize Altai among tourists from the Russian Federation, Mongolia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Hungary, Turkey, and the United States. The concept of the festival assumes that its cultural program will feature the presentation of the best tourist routes and resources of East Kazakhstan region, thereby contributing to the promotion of eco-ski tourism and building the popularity of the region.
Representatives of the United Nations Development Programme, Damu Entrepreneurship Development Fund, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and KazAutoZhol JSC were invited to the meeting.
Presenting examples of successful projects underway in other regions of the country to the attention, UNDP and ADB representatives expressed their readiness to consider projects in East Kazakhstan.
CEO of KazAutoZhol NC JSC Rustam Issayev told about the work being carried out in the field of road infrastructure: road reconstruction and development of service facilities in East Kazakhstan region. The national company's digitalization projects, such as Kazway application for road service facilities along highways, a pilot project for garbage collection, to name but a few, kindled the particular interest of the tourism community.
The pilot project for the elaboration of the National Gastronomic Map, which is planned to be implemented in East Kazakhstan region, can be considered as one of the first results of the meeting.
National cuisine is one of the crucial elements of Kazakhstan's tourism product. In world practice, culinary tourism generates flows of millions of gourmands around the world, traveling in search for new tastes and unique recipes in various parts of the world.
That is why on the second day after the roundtable, at the initiative of Kazakh Tourism NC JSC, Chef Ivan Gordeyev organized a master class on cooking and interpretation of old national dishes. In addition, Aigerim Mussagazhinova, a representative of the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan, conducted a master class on the importance of national cuisine as part of the national culture and on the results of the ethnographic expedition in East Kazakhstan region.