Tourism in Central Asia: Cultural Potential and Challenges

This book will be a major resource for all academic researchers and practitioners interested in issues dealing with the development of tourism, its potential and challenges, and policy and regulatory issues in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. These countries are gaining more attention as emerging destinations. There is limited research that focuses on these countries with respect to their potential and characteristics as tourism destinations. This book aims to be an invaluable source for both practitioners and academicians who are in international marketing and tourism.

The central Asia region (also termed the Silk Road region) as an emerging destination is ripe for future tourism development. The region is rich with historical, cultural, and natural beauty that could provide significant utility to many potential visitors. This book brings together key writings on this topic in a single resource.

Kemal Kantarci, PhD, is an associate professor of tourism management at Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey. His teaching and research interests are destination management and marketing, tourism geography, and tourism marketing. He also works as a consultant to public and private sector organizations. He has published several papers in international and national journals and proceedings. His studies are mainly focused on tourism opportunities and challenges in Central Asian and Balkan countries. Dr. Kantarci has visited Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA, as visiting professor and worked as a full-time lecturer at Ahmet Yesevi University, Kazakhstan. He currently teaches in the areas of tourism management, tourism geography, destination development, and tourism policy and planning.

Muzaffer Uysal, PhD, is a professor of tourism in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. He has extensive experience in the travel and tourism field, authoring or co-authoring a significant number of articles in tourism, hospitality, and recreation journals, proceedings, book chapters, and five monographs, and five books related to tourism research methods, tourist service satisfaction, tourism and quality of life, creating experience value in tourism, consumer psychology in tourism, and hospitality settings. He is a member of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism and the Academy of Leisure Sciences, and serves as co-editor of Tourism Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal. He has received a number of awards for research and excellence in international education, and teaching. His current research interests center on tourism demand/supply interaction, tourism development, and QOL research in tourism.

Vincent Magnini, PhD, is an associate professor of hospitality management in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Pamplin College of Business of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. His research interests reside mainly in the area of service management. He is as an associate editor to the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly and also serves on the editorial boards of a number of other journals, including the International Journal of Hospitality Management, the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, and the Journal of Travel Research. His recent book, titled Performance Enhancers: Twenty Essential Habits for Service Businesses, is being widely read across a variety of service sectors.