Hotel business problems were discussed in “Atameken”
January 12, in “Atameken” a video conference on the problems of the hotel industry was held headed by the vice-chairperson, Yulia Yakupbaeva. The meeting was attended by the representatives from hotels, tourist organizations, duty-bearers.
“This year we would like to start from the hotel market issues and understand what problems we have in this sphere and how to solve them”- said Yulia Yakupbaeva, opening the meeting.
First of all the main hotel business issues were discussed during the meeting.
It was mentioned that hostel managers have several problems because there is no such definition as “hostel” in the legislation.
“Nowadays we can see a situation where the entrepreneur wants to reequip non-residential premises into hostel because of its popularity but he doesn’t know his rights according to the existing legislation”-said the representative of the hotel industry of the Northern Kazakhstan region, Sairan Hamzin.
The second main question was the inaccessibility of land resources for the construction of hotels, resorts because of the limits in the Land and Water Codes.
A bad work of immigration website is also a problem. Disruptions in the work impede to timely register the foreigners. It became truly important because in the near future there will be some changes in the legislation which make the host side (company, tourist firm or hotel) responsible for the foreigner’s registration.
Representative of the Immigration department committee of the ministry of internal affairs of the republic of Kazakhstan N. Ristanov also shared the information. “Nowadays we want to shift the focus on the host side, but along with this will be introduced some simplifications. From July 1 all the foreigners will get an automatic registration just crossing the border with the republic of Kazakhstan. But nevertheless the host side must notify internal affairs bodies about the foreigner. And for that matter, you will need to fill special application and send it to the Chancellery of the Migration Service. So there will be no need to fill all the application forms and to leave the foreigner’s passport there”.
There were a lot of discussions on the offer of “Kazakh Tourism” about “bed tax”. This issue is being highly discussed already several years but it doesn’t find any support among the representatives of the hospitality market.
“It’s leading tourist countries experience and it is not such a burden for a tourist. But this tax allows to accumulate a large sum of money which will go towards the moneybox of your region and will be used for the tourism development. For example, in Berlin there is a lot of residential space for the rent. This was formalized and now housing owners charge “bed tax””- said Timur Duisengaliev, “Kazakh Tourism” vice-chairperson.
Tour operator companies’ representatives that were at the meeting also noted the necessity of active cooperation between hotels and tour operators under agency contracts. In its turn, tour operators could also give the information on their services.
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Yulia Yakupbaeva also commented on this issue. “There must be more beneficial cooperation between the hotels and tour operators. Nowadays the reality is that a businessman who comes in town for one day wants to leave it as fast as he can. The current business issue today is how to attract the tourists that hey stay for 2-3 days or come there again”.
At the end of the meeting hotel industry representatives were presented “Electricity and energy conservation” program. Darhan Kurmanbaev, Director of the project management and PPP development centre told how the hotels can be involved in the map of energy efficiency and how they can cut down on energy consumption.
As a result it was decided to send a letter to the Government on the issue of the foreigners registration with the help of the immigration site and also to gather all the market problems and to direct them to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan to obtain clarification.
It was also decided to conduct some extra meetings on the main issues such as bed tax implementation, hotel personnel education and internships, cooperation between hotels and tour operators, hotel categories receiving.
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