Coping with COVID-19: Uzbekistan’s Approach to Helping its Tourism Industry Survive
The outbreak of the pandemic has done little to quell Uzbekistan’s positive sentiment towards tourism and improving the tourism industry will likely be a major policy objective in years to come.
By Elizabeth Lewis, Analyst
The tourism economy around the world has been hit hard by COVID-19. Measures introduced to contain the spread of the pandemic resulted in border closures, travel restrictions, and brought tourism to a screeching halt. After a 60% decrease in tourism in the first two quarters of 2020, Uzbekistan decided to pursue a new strategy to reduce the pandemic’s negative impact on tourism, a sector that saw a 10% increase in government funding in 2020. On June 19, 2020, a decree signed by President Shakvat Mirziyoyev came into effect that introduced the “Uzbekistan. Safe travel Guaranteed” program for international travelers visiting Uzbekistan. This program asserts that it will provide compensation to tourists up to USD 3000 if they contract COVID-19 while traveling in Uzbekistan.
This article examines how the Uzbek media discussed tourism between 2016 and 2020 to assess whether the Uzbek tourism industry managed to set itself up focused on a variety of interests from shared security interests to economic cooperation. These ultimately aimed to enhance India’s ties with this region. Despite this, India’s ties with the region remain underdeveloped, and many analysts have highlighted the need for the nation to strengthen ties and develop a long-term strategy.
Blossoming Interest in International Tourism
Uzbek media’s interest in tourism steadily grew from 2016, peaking in 2019. This potentially drew from a government push, beginning in late 2016, to breathe new life into the country’s tourism industry with specific emphasis on expanding international engagement. However, interest in tourism experienced a modest decline in 2020, most likely as a result of the negative impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry.
Positive Attitude Toward Tourism Continues Despite the Pandemic
A closer look at the sentiment trends toward tourism show exuberantly positive sentiment in Uzbekistan from 2016 onwards and rising steeply in 2019. While sentiment remained positive even after the pandemic broke out in 2020, it declined.
The positive media coverage of tourism in Uzbekistan from 2016 to 2019 is linked to multiple factors. International tourism numbers from the World Bank reported that from 2017 to 2018 international arrivals in Uzbekistan more than doubled. This doubling can in part be contributed to a change in Uzbek visa policy that allowed citizens of 77 countries to obtain electronic tourist visas that greatly expedited the visa application process. The increase in international visitors continued and from 2018 to 2019 the State Committee for Tourism Development in Uzbekistan reported a 26% increase in tourism. In addition to this general growth in the country’s tourism industry, in 2019 specifically, the additional uptick in positive sentiment is most likely due to the overwhelmingly positive international media coverage that Uzbekistan received in leading magazines when they were naming the haute travel destinations for 2020. Both Harper’s Bazaar and Lonely Planet placed Uzbekistan on their lists of top places to visit in 2020.
In 2020, sentiment trends dipped below the extremely positive trends seen in 2019. The downturn of sentiment is likely due to travel and movement restrictions that were introduced following the outbreak of COVID-19. However, not only did sentiment remain significantly positive, but also when one compares sentiment toward tourism with the average sentiment expressed by each news outlet, the former was markedly higher. This suggests that tourism was still more positively covered than most other subjects and the downturn in sentiment toward can be attributed to a general decline in overall media sentiment.
This suggests that tourism was still more positively covered than most other subjects and the downturn in sentiment toward it can be attributed to a general decline in overall media sentiment.
This maintenance of positive sentiment despite a 76% decrease in the number of international visitors to Uzbekistan may indicate that the Central Asian nation is continuing to look favorably at the prospects of expanding its tourism sector despite the pandemic. The continued enthusiasm is also evidenced by the State Committee for Tourism Development in Uzbekistan’s new advertising campaign that highlights the commitment to disinfecting that the country is making to guarantee safe travel. However, this is a particularly risky gamble when considering that the worldwide average of international arrivals dropped by 74% in 2020.
Safety is a Top Concern
A deeper examination of the topics often discussed with tourism in Uzbek media illustrates the future direction of Uzbek efforts to stimulate tourism. Approximately two-thirds of the articles in Uzbek media from 2016 to 2020 mentioned international tourism. Surprisingly, despite a visa-free regime for tourists and accelerated development of tourist services being policies that are in place to attract more international tourists, they are poorly represented in articles on tourism. While both of these subjects were only mentioned in 6% and 7% of the articles respectively, the issue of safety appeared in a sizable 21% of articles. Most importantly, even though coronavirus only became part of conversations in the media from 2020 onwards, it was nevertheless mentioned in 8% of all articles pertaining to tourism during the four-year period, 2016–2020, this analysis considered. The intense media concentration on international tourism and safety suggests that going forward, policymakers will attempt to address concerns related to safety and coronavirus precautions to stimulate growth in the Uzbek tourism sector. The importance of safety has been underscored by the Uzbek Ministry of Tourism’s statement confirming that “Uzbekistan is ready to open to the world as the safest tourist destination.”
The intense media concentration on international tourism and safety suggests that going forward, policymakers will attempt to address concerns related to safety and coronavirus precautions to stimulate growth in the Uzbek tourism sector.
Implications
Uzbekistan is more accessible than ever to foreign tourists following the introduction of visa-free and electronic visa entry. The outbreak of the pandemic appears to have only slightly dampened Uzbekistan’s attitude toward welcoming international tourists. With media sentiment toward tourism remaining significantly higher than the country’s baseline media sentiment in 2020, improving Uzbekistan’s tourism industry will likely continue to be a policy objective for Uzbekistan in the future. While the Uzbek media acknowledges the importance of addressing concerns related to safety and the novel coronavirus to achieve its tourism goals, it remains to be seen whether the country can follow through.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Lewis is an analyst at Hillhouse Consulting Group. A graduate student at Georgetown University, studying Eurasian, Russian, and East European Affairs, she has particular interest in the way conceptualizations of nationalism have developed in post-Soviet states. She speaks Russian and previously spent one year teaching at Belarus State University in Minsk, Belarus as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant.
ABOUT HILLHOUSE
Hillhouse Consulting Group specializes in data driven analysis on issues related to sustainable development, infrastructure, and energy in frontier markets, helping organizations understand today’s challenges and opportunities. We bring world-class expertise to regional challenges by combining the best of international academic and research practices with a rigorous and informed local perspective, delivering the best of both words. We achieve this through our custom-built Hillhouse Sentiment Analysis Tool that tracks opinion trends across local news media. Our tool is shortlisted for the World Bank’s Global Disruptive Tech Challenge 2021. To learn more about retaining our team for custom analysis and reports, please click here.
