DIRECTIONS AND AREAS OF TOURISM RESEARCH IN KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze research directions in tourism and the geography of Kazakhstan's tourism in order to identify those areas of research that are most often and underrepresented and cited in the literature, which will allow to identify potential, poorly recognized problems and research directions. The research material includes articles from journals indexed in Scopus. Research methods include statistical and bibliometric analysis of the number of authors, articles, journals and citations. In defining the research fields, classical classifications of research in tourism geography were used. Over the last five years, there has been a clear increase in the number of publications indexed in the Scopus database by over 450% in 2020 compared to 2015. Kazakhstan, tourism and tourism is the most frequently used key words. The articles with key words: ecocultural, marketing, sustainability, development and natural values have the highest number of citations, whose citations exceed the average value for the analyzed set of articles. The conducted research has indicated the most frequently chosen directions and areas of research in the field of tourism geography in Kazakhstan. These include articles in the field of development management and marketing. However, the texts from the ecocultural field have the highest impact factor defined by the number of those cited. Marketing, sustainability, development and natural values are on the next positions.