Abstract
The purpose of the work was to assess the peculiarities of the functioning of tourism and hotel business in this area, as well as to draw conclusions about the possibilities for further improvement. The main research methods were analysis, forecasting and abstraction. The dynamics of the development of tourism services in Kazakhstan was investigated and key percentage changes was highlighted, in particular, the real growth in the volume of services, taking into account inflation, by 171%, which corresponds to an average annual increase of 6.4%, as well as fluctuations in 2020–2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and migration processes. It was highlighted that domestic tourism is developing faster than external tourism, since the number of residents served increased by 565%, while non-residents by 255%. It was also found that the city of Almaty concentrates the largest share of the country’s tourist activity (more than 22% of sleep days, 30.7% of the volume of services and 24.7% of visitors), while the Zhetysu region occupies medium positions with a share of about 4–5% in terms of basic indicators. It was highlighted that the modernization of tourism infrastructure, the development of digital solutions, the expansion of types of tourist services, the priority of ecological tourism. The obtained results can be used for public authorities, regional managers, representatives of the tourism and hotel business, as well as investors to justify management decisions, plan infrastructure development and improve the efficiency of the region’s tourism industry.