How foreign visitors spend money in Kazakhstan: survey data by country

Half of what a foreign visitor spends on a trip to Kazakhstan goes on getting there: 49.2% of all spending in the official survey of departing visitors. For long-haul visitors the share is higher still, 69.2% for South Koreans, 67.8% for Germans and 66.8% for Chinese visitors. Inside the country, spending per night varies far less between nationalities than the total trip cost suggests. We converted the Bureau of National Statistics (BNS) survey tables into shares and indices, without tenge amounts, so the comparison does not age with the exchange rate.

Key numbers

• 25,001 respondents, interviewed in January and July 2026 as they left Kazakhstan.
• 49.2% of spending goes on transport to Kazakhstan; 50.8% is spent inside the country.
• On the ground: food 33.1%, shopping 25.0%, accommodation 22.8%, local transport 8.1%.
• Jewellery and precious stones: 3.4% of all spending, more than a quarter of all shopping.
• 45.5% of overnight visitors stayed free with family or friends; 27.0% used hotels.
• Average stay: 3.8 nights. Indians stayed 9.0 nights, Germans 6.1.

About the survey

BNS interviews non-residents as they leave: at airports (6,148 questionnaires), railway stations (9,006), bus stations (6,500) and road border crossings (3,347). The latest edition, published on 8 October 2026, covers January and July together and does not split the two months. 73.8% of respondents travelled for personal reasons and 26.2% on business.

The sample is dominated by neighbouring countries: 51% of questionnaires come from Russian citizens, 15% from Uzbekistan and 13% from Kyrgyzstan. Long-haul samples are small (149 Indians, 178 Koreans, 57 Americans), so treat their indices as indicative.

What the money goes on

Food is the largest item inside the country at 16.8% of all spending, with restaurants and cafés accounting for 10.2%. Shopping is 12.7%, and a quarter of that is jewellery and precious stones. Paid leisure is small: cultural services 1.9%, recreation and sport 0.8%, travel agencies and tour operators 0.2%.

Getting there takes two thirds of the long-haul budget

The further away the country, the bigger the share of the journey. Visitors from South Korea, Germany, China and Türkiye spend around two thirds of their trip budget on transport to Kazakhstan; Kyrgyz visitors, who mostly come by bus or car, spend 25.3%. Across the sample, 26.7% of respondents arrived by air, 35.1% by train, 22.5% by international bus and 14.0% by their own car. For those who flew, the average air fare equalled 0.8 of the average respondent’s whole-trip spending.

Spending per night on the ground

To compare nationalities fairly, we removed transport to Kazakhstan and divided the rest by the number of nights. An index of 1.0 is the average of all respondents.

A German or Korean trip costs 2.5–2.8 times the average, but nearly all of the difference is the flight: per night on the ground, Germans and Koreans spend about the same as Russians. Indian visitors stay longest and spend the least per night in the table. Chinese visitors make short trips and spend the most per night, a third of it on accommodation.

Where visitors sleep

Of 24,808 overnight visitors, 11,279 stayed free with relatives or friends, 6,696 in hotels and 5,776 in rented flats or houses. This is why accommodation ranks only fourth in total spending. How full hotels actually are, by region and resort, is in our study of hotel occupancy in Kazakhstan.

Leisure trips versus business trips

Business travellers spend about a third more, almost entirely on the journey and hotels. Leisure travellers spend more on food and shopping.

Cash and satisfaction

Every respondent paid at least part of their costs in cash. 24.4% paid only in cash, 20.6% about three quarters, 26.1% about half and 28.9% about a quarter. Card and ATM advice is on our money in Kazakhstan page.

Of 24,654 people who rated their trip, 92.2% chose “excellent”. Excursion and guide services scored lowest: 81.7% “excellent”, 4% “satisfactory”.

What this means for your budget

If you are coming from far away, your ticket is the main variable; daily costs on the ground are comparable for visitors from very different countries. For a costed park trip by car, bus or tour, see what a national park trip costs. Which countries send the most visitors is covered in arrivals in Kazakhstan by country, and flight times from nine cities in direct flights to Kazakhstan.

Methodology

1. We downloaded the BNS publication on the sample survey of inbound visitors, January and July 2026 (23 sheets).
2. From table 15 (spending by country of residence) and table 13 (respondents and nights by country) we calculated spending per respondent and per night.
3. A country index is its average divided by the average of all 25,001 respondents. “On the ground” means total spending minus transport to Kazakhstan.
4. Spending structure comes from table 6, personal and business trips from tables 7 and 8, transport from tables 9 and 10, accommodation from table 18, cash from table 17 and ratings from table 20.
5. Charts and the country table include only countries with 100 or more respondents; the rest are in the CSV.

What we don’t know

How to cite

Suggested credit: “charyn.kz calculation based on the BNS sample survey of inbound visitors, January and July 2026”. Example: “Transport to Kazakhstan accounts for 49.2% of foreign visitors’ spending, according to the official survey (charyn.kz calculation).”

Indices for all 75 countries in the sample are in a CSV file under CC BY 4.0. Our approach to sources is described in the methodology.