Kazakhstan on the Map of Vipservice

Kazakhstan

Successfully located in the heart of the continent, combining a small part of Europe and a big piece of Asia, Kazakhstan can justly be considered a unique country, which at the same time keeps up with the times. Despite the rapid pace of development of Kazakhstan, its main attraction was and remains the Great Steppe—a 'landmark' of the Republic. In 2019, the country's first President Nursultan Nazarbayev left his post (he ruled for almost 30 years) and its capital Astana was renamed to Nursultan.

Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, is the largest city of the Republic. It is the most secular city of Kazakhstan and at the same time its largest financial, economic and cultural centre. Almaty is famous for its Medeo mountain ice complex which considered to be the largest in the world, the picturesque Green Bazaar and a huge number of fountains.

Biletix.kz + Portbilet.kz

A Kazakh agency, which is headed by Maksat Tabylganov since 2008, applied for Vipservice technologies in 2016. This was preceded by several years of attempts to create an online ticket service. Our future partners have even grown to consolidators of railway tickets. But, according to Maksat, the technological expertise in the Republic at that time was clearly insufficient.

'After the first Skype conversation with Aleksandr Sizintsev, the head of Biletix at that time, we realised that we want only this platform. First, Aleksandr Yurievich is our fellow-countryman, he is from Almaty. Secondly, the Biletix technology is impressive. For Biletix, the most important reason, probably, was that our eyes were shining with the desire to develop. We have been trying to create a platform ourselves for so long, and we were very happy that we found great partners and will be able to develop our business, keep up with the times. We completed the merger by April 2017. However, the biggest ticket sales are yet to come', Maksat said.

In 2016, there was a personal meeting of Maksat Tabylganov with Vipservice shareholders at the Biletix event. They decided to use the agency experience and influence of new colleagues to launch the Portbilet project on the Kazakhstan market. Today, Portbilet in Kazakhstan already uses direct Vipservice contracts and settles accounts in the national currency—tenge.

'We are still delighted with the system, every day we open new opportunities in it. From the start to today, we have reached the sale of 2,000 railway tickets and 500–700 air tickets per month. We have 160 partners. But we have not yet completed the transition of sale of railway tickets from our old platform. By the end of the year, this figure will grow to 7–8 thousand tickets per month and the number of partners will grow to 250. In addition, now there are 3 low-cost airlines in the country. If we connect them all, sales will grow multi-fold', Maksat believes.

Today, Kazakhstan's partners are drivers of the online travel market in the Republic. They were the initiators of the first profile conference in 2017 and became co-organisers of three industry events by 2019.