Georgian tourism strategy 2015 revealed
What can Georgia do to boost tourism?

The Georgian National Tourism Administration (GNTA) has revealed the country’s long-term tourism goal is to develop the country as a sought-after tourist destination, increase the international profile of Georgia and bring more benefits to the nation.

Today head of the GNTA Giorgi Chogovadze presented Georgia’s Tourism Strategy 2025, which showed a vision and strategic plan on how to grow the value and importance of tourism to Georgia’s economy and ultimately bring benefits to the people of Georgia.

The World Bank and global tourism consulting firm Solimar International teamed up to help the GNTA design a National Strategy. The state, private sector, non-governmental and international organisations were also involved in developing the plan.

The key points of Georgia’s Tourism Strategy 2025

The National Strategy envisaged increasing the income received from international tourism from $1.8 billion USD, which Georgia receives today, to $5.5 billion USD per year.

In particular, the goal was for each one visitor to spend $500 per day, up from the $320 currently spent while visiting Georgia.

Georgia also seeks to increase the number of visitors to 11 million per year. Initially the National Strategy wanted to see an 80 percent increase in the number of tourists from Georgia’s neighboring countries, and to double the number of tourists from Western Europe, Asian and North American countries.

Those who created the National Strategy believed it was very important to have more people employed in the tourism and hospitality sectors in Georgia. To tackle this, the number of employed in these sectors would increase by 85 percent.

Increasing the amount of time visitors spent in Georgia was also mentioned in the National Strategy. The aim was to see tourists increase their time spent in Georgia from an average of 4.3 days to 5.3 days.

Georgia also will work to increase Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) flowing into the tourism sector by 63 percent – a growth from today’s $559 million to $910 million per year.

Furthermore, the tourism sector must contribute 6.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the economy, up from the six percent it contributed today.