Tourism Administration to spend GEL 10 million on promoting Georgia

Georgia’s National Tourism Administration (GNTA) will spend GEL 10 million for promoting the country’s tourism potential. The GNTA Head Mariam Kvrivishvili made the statement.

Kvrivishvili explains that the GNTA total budget is GEL 17 million out of which 7 million has already been spent on various activities.

“European countries, Israel, the United States and the Persian Gulf countries are the main target markets where marketing activities are being held for the popularization of Georgia this year,” she said.

GNTA Head says marketing campaigns are already underway in Israel, Germany, and the Netherlands.

"We are on the stage of signing contracts with platforms such as National Geographic, Conde Nast, and others. In addition to launching a campaign in Saudi Arabia, we have an event in Kuwait where representatives of our Convention Bureau together with the private sector will promote business tourism,” she explained.

In addition, the GNTA will hold a large-scale event in Kazakhstan, where Georgia’s tourism potential will be promoted.

Kvrivishvili says that after the Russian ban on direct flights with Georgia, GNTA focuses on marketing Georgia at such countries, whose citizens can visit Georgia this summer. Such countries are Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

"There are two main criteria for selecting these countries - the liberal visa regime and direct air traffic. We also take into account the factor, how fast the citizens of these countries make a decision to travel," she said.

2019 is the first year when the government will not spend money on marketing activities in Russia. In 2013-2018, the government spent 13 million GEL for the marketing of the Georgian tourism activities in the Russian Federation.

According to official statistics, the most of these GEL 13 million - nearly 6 million was spent in marketing in Russia in 2018.

Since 2013, the number of visitors from Russia has been continually growing and reached 1.4 million visitors last year.

However, after the Russian President Vladimir Putin banned direct flights with Georgia on June 21, it is believed that this year only the country will lose one million tourists which will result in around $700 loss.