Uzbekistan’s revenue from tourism increased almost 4 times compared to last year

In January-September 2022, Uzbekistan received more than $1.1 billion from the export of tourism services, Spot reports citing the State Statistics Committee. 

Compared to the same period in 2021, tourism revenue increased by 3.7 times. It accounted for almost 40% of the volume of exports of services, which has increased one and a half times since the beginning of the year to $2.82 billion.

In turn, services account for approximately 20% of the total trade exports of Uzbekistan. Thus, tourism brought the country 7.8% of export earnings in nine months.

According to another publication of the State Statistics Committee, the rapid growth in income from tourism services is associated, among other things, with a huge flow of visitors from Russia who arrived in the country.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 100,000 Russians have arrived in Uzbekistan for the purposes of recreation and leisure, 3.5 times ahead of the closest pursuer in the face of Kazakhstan (29.9 thousand). Every third tourist visiting Uzbekistan came from Russia. For 9 months, 10.3 thousand Russians visited Uzbekistan on business trips, significantly ahead of Turkey and Kazakhstan with 7.1 and 7.3 thousand, respectively.

In the first nine months, almost 3.6 million foreign citizens entered Uzbekistan. Compared to the previous year, the number of guests more than tripled, but remained below the level of the pre-pandemic 2019 (4.9 million people).

The vast majority of visitors are citizens of the CIS countries. Leadership is held by Kazakhstan with 1.07 million people. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are next, coming close to 1 million. Russia ranks only fourth with 395,000 guests. The main purpose of travel is to visit relatives.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Uzbekistan, over 318,000 Russians arrived in the country in the first nine months, including 210,000 people in July-September. The Federal Service of Russia reports that 126,000 people left Russia for Uzbekistan in the third quarter.