Novaya Zelandiya! Kazakh celebrity travel blogger Alisher Yelikbayev was among several visitors who had visas cancelled at the last minute on a package tour of New Zealand. Photo / Sweatberry Tours
Novaya Zelandiya! Kazakh celebrity travel blogger Alisher Yelikbayev was among several visitors who had visas cancelled at the last minute on a package tour of New Zealand. Photo / Sweatberry Tours
Last week travel influencer Alisher Yelikbayev, 42, was one of three Kazakh nationals who had their New Zealand holidays cancelled, at the last minute and under mysterious circumstances.
Yelikbayev, a businessman and prominent travel blogger, was booked to take part in a 10-day tour of the country. However, last week he was stopped from boarding his plane in Doha. Despite having already started his journey from Almaty, his visa was cancelled in transit, leaving him in Qatar and tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket.
As the flight to Auckland was boarding the Yelikbayev and the other travellers - were called to the gate.
“We were connected with the immigration police in New Zealand over the phone, and we were asked questions about the route, hotel reservations, internal flights, families, business, the availability of funds on the card, even about my Instagram.”
The immigration agent wanted to know why he was taking the 10-day holiday to New Zealand without his partner or children.
“I travelled without my family because my children find long flights difficult,” he said.
He said that he had just come back from a trip to Thailand and southeast Asia in January with his partner and children, but he preferred to travel solo to New Zealand.
“I have never been removed from a flight,” Yelikbayev told the Herald.
As one of Kazakhstan’s best-known travel bloggers, Yelikbayev in 2019 made the country’s Forbes list for 25 most influential stars in show business which described him as a “self-styled communications specialist”.
Yelikbayev has a quarter of a million followers on Instagram and a big Telegram fanbase in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Russia. Forbes reported that his income from social media alone was over $370,000.
Two other travellers booked on the tour, Kazakh nationals Aleksandr Sumin and Aigerim Adilkhanova, also had their visas revoked and their business class fares cancelled.
The three travellers were each left out-of-pocket by $10,000 in cancelled plane tickets on top of the $17,830 in tour fees.
The incident cut the number of guests from seven to four.
Kuat Bolatov, the guide who was leading the New Zealand trip, said there had been issues with getting the visas granted.
“He [Yelikbayev] was angry because he couldn’t hear the customs officer clearly. It was a bad connection,” he said, having spoken with him shortly after the issue. “It’s super strange.”
Bolatov said the decision to turn away the blogger was a loss for New Zealand tourism.
“Alisher is a quite well known person in Kazakhstan. He has so many followers. There are always tourists visiting the countries he has been to, following his path.”
The guide for Sweatberry Tours, a luxury travel agency working with clients from central Asia, had continued the trip with his remaining clients.
The trip was billed as a 10-day tour of the country, from March 20 to 30, with visa support included. The US$10,700 tour was advertised with farcical imagery of Kazakh tourists photoshopped onto imagery from Lord of The Rings and Hobbiton.
Novaya Zelandiya! Kazakh celebrity travel blogger Alisher Yelikbayev was among several visitors who had visas cancelled at the last minute on a package tour of New Zealand. Photo / Sweatberry Tours
Bolatov maintains they were not invited by Tourism New Zealand or on behalf of any other business. Their travel was purely for leisure.
Olga Galkina, one of the other guests who described herself as in the “shoes business”, said all the travellers on the tour knew each other from previous trips.
They had been to Iceland and Japan together, and hoped to be in New Zealand to celebrate the holiday of Nowruz.
“It’s a very beautiful country, friendly people, but it’s a shame to not be able to share our feelings with our friends because they are not here,” she said.
Having travelled from Melbourne on the same class of visa as Yelikbayev, she had no issues.
Immigration asked influencer Alisher Yelikbayev why he was travelling to New Zealand without his wife Madina and children. Photo / @Yelikbayev
A spokesperson for New Zealand Immigration told the Herald that the visas were cancelled because the reasons for travel were called into doubt as “genuine visitors”.
“As part of our normal passenger screening processes, Immigration border staff found that Mr Yelikbayev did not meet New Zealand entry requirements as a genuine visitor,” operations director Janine Parsons said.
Immigration says it may decide not to allow a traveller to enter New Zealand if information provided was misleading or withheld from an application. He was advised to reapply for a new visa.
This was in spite of having been granted a visitor visa on January 19, 2024.
Yalikbayev said that no recommendations for reapplying for the visa were conveyed through the Kazakh consulate or in emails with Immigration. He said the lost holiday had left him in a “state of depression”.
There was no further background available on the decision or why the visas were issued or how the guests were able to begin their journey on these visitor visas.
Among the blogger’s business interests is a Kazakh online travel agency and a Russian fast food franchise, however, he insists his solo trip to New Zealand was solely for pleasure.
Yelikbayev also worked for 18 years as a media adviser for Nurlan Smagulov, who had been honorary consul of New Zealand in Kazakhstan from 2014 to 2020.
However, he told the Herald that he had no business interests in New Zealand and had never visited the country before.
