Central Asia is fast becoming one of the trendiest travel locations for Brits, Americans, and Europeans.
Over the last couple of years, first a smattering, then a flood of posts showing bloggers embarking on horse treks across Kyrgyzstan and touring the markets of Uzbek cities, has filled my Instagram feed. I know I am not the only one.
Part of this can be attributed to social media’s algorithmic black magic, where niche topics can gain rapid traction and become new trends overnight. Another part of the equation is my pre-existing interest in the region, which makes me the perfect candidate for this content. However, this growing social media storm can also be attributed to the active efforts of Central Asian leaders to promote tourism and project a new international image.
Analysts often write about competition in Central Asia, whether it be competition for foreign direct investment, or Russia and China’s competition for influence in the region. But a subtler, more nebulous battle for soft power – where success could be measured by tourist numbers, social media interactions, and Google search analytics – is simultaneously afoot in Central Asia.
So far, Uzbekistan seems to be coming out on top.
Winners and losers
Naturally, not all Central Asian nations are benefitting equally from the growing interest in tourism in the region. Uzbekistan appears to be gaining the most attention online, with Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan following shortly behind.
Google searches in the UK relating to tourism and travel in these countries have spiked over the last five years. Searches for “Uzbekistan travel restrictions” have gone up 800%, and queries for “Uzbekistan entry requirements” grew around 550%. Searches for “Kazakhstan entry requirements” rose by 400%, searches for “Kyrgyzstan horse trekking” are up by 200%.
In the UK, Kazakhstan has historically been the most frequently googled Central Asian country [see figure 1]. Since January 2022, Uzbekistan has been inching closer to its neighbour, potentially due to increased interest in its tourist sites. Around a quarter of the top queries on Google about Uzbekistan over the last five years were related to tourism. For the other Central Asian countries, these accounted for between 8-12% of top searches, apart from Kazakhstan (for which none of the most searched queries related to tourism).
Travel in Central Asia is not yet mainstream. The top searches relating to these countries over the last five years included “worldle” and “globle” or, in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan’s cases, searches for tennis player Elena Rybakina or Manchester United’s Abdukodir Khusanov respectively.
Yet interest in travel to Central Asia, particularly to Uzbekistan, is undeniably on the rise, and it is not solely thanks to the services of Instagram travel bloggers that you or I may have seen.
Samarkand, Paris, Berlin, London
In recent years, international exhibitions showcasing Uzbekistan’s history and culture at Europe’s foremost cultural institutions have helped to raise the country’s profile.
In 2022, the Louvre hosted an exhibition entitled ‘The Splendours of Uzbekistan’s Oases’. Access to the exhibition was included in the museum’s permanent collection tickets for no extra cost. The premise of the exhibition was thrilling: many items were being exhibited outside of Uzbekistan for the first time. In practice, the main room was dominated by a large screen, onto which drone footage of azure-tiled landmarks in Samarkand was projected. As I moved around the space, I could not help but notice that many visitors were more enraptured by the buildings on the screen, than by the exhibits in the hall. The footage brought the country’s most striking tourist sites to France and – from the looks of it – also helped to bring French tourists to Uzbekistan. Over the last five years, “Uzbekistan travel” has become the second most commonly googled query relating to Uzbekistan in France.
In 2023, Berlin’s Staatliche Museen hosted a similar exhibition, which was titled ‘the Archaeological Treasures of Uzbekistan’. Most recently, the British Museum hosted its ‘Silk Roads’ exhibition, which brought together objects that had travelled ‘from East Asia to Britain, and from Scandinavia to Madagascar’, and told the story of the networks and routes along which they passed. Centrally located within the exhibition space was a section dedicated to Uzbekistan, casting the country as a crucial nexus of the silk roads. The Hall of the Ambassadors six-metre wall painting from modern-day Samarkand was the archeological showstopper of the exhibition, and captured reviewers’ and museum-goers’ attention alike.
State-led initiatives
These three exhibitions were supported by the government of Uzbekistan, which has been redoubling its efforts to recast its international image and attract tourists in recent years.
After former president Islam Karimov’s death in 2016, the country’s new leader, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has tried to attract foreign investment into the economy and create a new, more open international image. In 2017, shortly after Mirziyoyev became president, the government incorporated the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Foundation, which aims to promote the country’s art and culture domestically and internationally. It is this organisation that has collaborated with the Louvre, the Staatliche Museen, and the British Museum.
Tourism is classed as a ‘strategic sector of the economy’. In 2019, president Mirziyoyev mandated a rapid development of tourist infrastructure in the country. In 2022, a new Ministry for Tourism and Cultural Heritage was established to respond to the ‘increased attention paid to the tourism sector in recent years’.
Unravelling the Silk Road?
In a 2025 article for the BBC, Catherine Bennett noted that state tourism promotion policies often risk damaging Uzbekistan’s historical sites and the neighbourhoods of local communities, whose cities are being reshaped by the drive to create travel infrastructure.
Ironically, the state’s fervour for tourism promotion risks damaging some of the very historical and cultural assets that attract tourists. At the same time as footage of Uzbekistan’s architectural wonders was being broadcast to museum-goers in Europe, some sites risked damage or demolition at home.
Bennett’s piece focused on a development in Bukhara, but I found her interviewees’ observations rang true about other towns on the Silk Road that I had seen whilst travelling in 2023. In particular, there was something uncanny about Khiva, an historic oasis city and developing tourist hub. The citadel, with striking adobe walls, is jealously guarded with ticket-gates and turnstiles at every entry point. This means that if your hostel is in the citadel, you have to buy a ticket to get in and drop off your bags. The main squares and thoroughfares are overflowing with souvenir markets, and travellers are limited to expensive, disappointing food options. It resembled a desert Disneyland, a shiny but hollowed-out version of the experience a Western tourist may seek as she searches the internet for “London to Uzbekistan”.
I remember feeling surprised when leaving Khiva’s citadel on the way to Karakalpakstan, and after a mere few minutes’ drive, our car was passing through streets of houses, restaurants, and shopping centres – the actual city of Khiva! We left Khiva without seeing this town at all, lulled into two days of stupor in the theme park in the desert.
Uzbekistan’s efforts to promote itself as a tourism hub appear to be working, with travel content about the country gaining organic traction on search engines and on social media. But the government must balance its desire to promote tourism with the risk creating oasis theme parks, devoid of the very local charm and architectural wonder that many tourists seek.