Yerzhan Yerkinbayev, Chairman of the Board of Directors of JSC “NC” Kazakh Tourism” has been awarded a Cultural and Linguistic Westernization Award for launching an extraordinary marketing campaign to promote the country’s tourism abroad. Kazakh Tourism capitalized on the film “Borat” which originally presented Kazakhstan in a sarcastic way, and turned the Borat character’s catchphrase into a positive message and the country’s tourism slogan: “Kazakhstan. Very nice!”
The award handover ceremony was held online on April 26.
During the award ceremony, Yerzhan Yerkinbayev spoke about the launch of the “Kazakhstan. Very nice! ” campaign and answered the questions by Anatoly Motkin, President of StrategEast on the development of tourism sector in Kazakhstan. In particular, Mr. Yerkinbayev noted that Kazakhstan sees itself primarily as a country for ecological tourism – mountain climbing, skiing, visiting natural reserves. Speaking about the digitalization of the tourism industry, Mr. Yerkinbayev told about the tourist portal of Kazakhstan in seven languages, the creation of a platform that manages big data and a new digital system for registering tourists living in hotels in Kazakhstan.
StrategEast Westernization Award was established in 2018 and is awarded to emphasize the significant contributions of politicians, business representatives, and civil activists in creating closer ties between this region and the Western World. It is presented in 6 categories: Economic Westernization, Political Westernization, Legal Westernization, Westernization of Lifestyle, Language and Culture Westernization, and Lifetime Achievement.
The award handover ceremony video recording is available here
Learn more about the nominees of the recent StrategEast Westernization Award here.
