Tag Archives: tourism

Comment: Georgia moves towards visa-free EU access, writes Bernardi

DEC. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Georgian Dream coalition government in Georgia stands on the brink of a great victory. It may have been former President Mikheil Saakashvili who set the ball rolling for more integration with the EU for Georgia but he has been vanquished by the Georgian Dream. To the victor the spoils.

Now — once the mechanism to kick out any countries whose citizens abuse the system has been approved, and this EU sources say is a mere formality — Georgians holding biometric passports will be able to enter the 26-country Schengen area for up to 90 days.

By early next year Georgians will be able to avoid the tiring, often boring and sometimes humiliating visa process. Instead they’ll be able to confidently stroll up to immigration queues handover their passport, flash a smile and then skip over into the EU.

And good for them.

This hasn’t been an easy or even straight forward process. There have been plenty of times when the EU could have pulled the process. Instead both the EU and Georgia have stuck to the script. Just. The big wobble was created by the Syria refugee crisis. Suddenly, once the impact of hundreds of thousands of hungry and impoverished refugees had been absorbed by Europe, and Germany in particular, the EU was less keen to allow visa-free access to Georgia, and also to Ukraine as it happens.

Of course though, the perceived threat of Georgian people flows was overblown. There are only 4m people in Georgia and they are not all involved in organised crime, as the German government seemed to imply at one point. The vast majority also don’t want to migrate to Europe. They just want to be treated as equals.

Perhaps, though, geopolitical forces also propelled the process along again. With Russia seemingly dominant in eastern Ukraine and in the Middle East, the EU may have wanted to remind the Kremlin that soft power and the slow pull of European values can be influential. By agreeing to grant Georgia, and Ukraine, visa-free access to the Schengen area, the EU is making itself relevant.

Make no mistake, Georgia’s westward European trajectory is as geopolitically charged as it ever was.

By Giulia Bernardi, The Conway Bulletin’s Tbilisi correspondent

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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)

Georgian capital hotel boom given another lift as Hilton prepares to open

TBILISI, NOV. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — US-based hotel chain Hilton will finally open a new $31m four-star hotel in Tbilisi next year, its first in the Georgian capital, adding much-needed extra bedrooms in Georgia where both tourist and business visits are rising steadily.

The 14-storey Hilton Garden Inn hotel, which will open a few months behind schedule, will hold 165 rooms and be situated towards the western end of Tbilisi, an area which has become a hub for Georgia’s professional businesses and for many Western companies working in the country.

Hilton, which already owns a hotel in Georgia’s Black Sea coast of Batumi and in Baku and Yerevan, had announced in 2013 that it was to build the hotel which it had aimed to open by the end of 2016.

And the Hilton hotel is just the latest to be built in Tbilisi, which has been notoriously short of bedrooms for years but is experiencing something of a hotel building boom.

The National Agency for State Property this week also sold an ornate 100-year-old post office building in the centre of Tbilisi to Nevada, a local real estate company, for 5.7m lari ($2.4m). Nevada plans to convert the building into a 30-bedroom boutique hotel within 3-1/2 years.

Tourism in Georgia is on the rise. Georgia is positioning itself as an affordable summer and winter destination for people living in the former Soviet Union, and you are now as likely to see upwardly mobile young Kazakhs in Batumi as you are in any resort around the Black Sea. Improved ties with Russia have also triggered a rise in visitor numbers, as has relative stability in Iran and Iraq. Revenues from tourism grew to $2b last year, an 8.3% increase compared to 2014.

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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

China wants tourism investment in Kazakhstan

OCT. 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — China wants to invest $11b in developing tourism on the banks of Lake Baikal in southern Kazakhstan, media reported. It said that a memorandum of understanding had been signed between two companies to start exploring the best way to invest the Chinese cash. Attracting Chinese tourist to Lake Baikal would be a potential boom for the area.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Kazakhstan to extend visa-free travel

OCT. 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will expand its visa-free regime next year, in an effort to boost tourism, the ministry of investment and development said. The new regulations will expand visa-free travel beyond the current 20 developed economies, to include all OECD countries from January 2017.

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(News report from Issue No. 300, published on Oct. 14 2016)

Trade between Georgia and S. Arabia rises

OCT. 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Trade turnover between Georgia and Saudi Arabia has increased, the two countries’ diplomatic corps said at a meeting in London. Saudi investment into Georgia reached $100m in the first nine months of the year and total trade turnover has doubled. Tourism is also on the rise, with visits from Saudi Arabia to Georgia likely to triple.

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(News report from Issue No. 300, published on Oct. 14 2016)

Radisson Blue to build in Kyrgyzstan

OCT. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Brussels-based Rezidor Hotel Group said that its first Radisson Blu hotel in Kyrgyzstan will open in 2019. Rezidor has teamed up with local LLC Stability to build the hotel in central Bishkek. The Radisson Blu is Rezidor’s high-end hotel brand. In Central Asia and the South Caucasus, Radisson Blu hotels already operate in Astana, Tashkent, Yerevan and Tbilisi.

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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

Georgia secures EU support for visa-free access

TBILISI, OCT. 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — EU member states agreed to relax visa requirements for Georgians, a major step towards Georgia’s stated aim of gaining visa-free travel to the EU’s Schengen Zone.

The agreement needs to be voted on by the European Parliament but it would allow Georgian citizens to travel to the EU for up to 90 days in any 180-day period.

“The Council takes the view that the entry into force of visa liberalisation for Georgia should be at the same time as the entry into force of the new ‘suspension mechanism’,” said the EU Council.

The suspension mechanism is a new tool that will be introduced to allow the EU to withdraw visa-free access quickly if members felt that it was being abused. The EU has said that this mechanism was necessary to give visa-free access to Ukraine, Turkey and Kosovo, as well as Georgia.

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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

Cartu Foundation to invest in Georgia

SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Cartu Foundation and the Georgian Co-Investment Fund, both supported by Georgia’s richest man Bidzina Ivanishvili, have invested $80m in the construction of a new hotel and a botanical garden in the town of Ganmukhuri, on the unofficial border with Abkhazia. Abkhazia is a breakaway region that declared its independence from Georgia after a brief war in 2008.

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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

Turkmenistan opens new airport in Ashgabat shaped like a bird

SEPT. 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov opened a new airport in Ashgabat, which included a bird- shaped passenger terminal, that cost $2.3b to build and is capable of serving 17m passengers a year.

The airport, which the World Record Academy has called the world’s largest bird-shaped building, spans 364m.

Mr Berdymukhamedov wants the airport to become a key hub for pas- senger and cargo transit between Europe and Asia.

“The opening of the new international airport in Ashgabat will contribute to the full integration of Turkmenistan in the system of international relations,” a Turkmen government website wrote.

To achieve these ambitious goals, the government will have to relax some of its visa rules. Last year, only 110,000 foreigners visited Turkmenistan, according to Turkmen data.

Grandiose buildings, however, also serve as photo-ops and symbols of Mr Berdymukhamedov’s attempts to mould Turkmenistan’s image onto his own.

The near empty over-sized resort town of Avaza on the Caspian Sea shore, an indoor Ferris wheel considered the largest in the world and the largest hand-woven carpet all tell a similar story to that of the newly- unveiled airport.

The Guinness World Records said in 2013 that Ashgabat was the city with the greatest density of marble- clad buildings.

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(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)

Georgia-Russia road link closure hurts Tbilisi tourism

TBILISI, JULY 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The closure of a road that threads through the Caucasus mountains and connects Georgia to Russia for three weeks because of a landslide has hit tourism in Tbilisi, highlighting the importance of the neighbours’ only direct overland link.

Russian tourism in Georgia has increased steadily over the past eight years since a Georgia-Russia war over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Many Russians drive to Georgia along the only road directly linking the two countries at the Kazbegi border.

The other two roads linking Georgia and Russia run through South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway region in Georgia. Both routes are closed off to Georgia.

Giorgi Bregadze, head of the research department at the Georgian National Tourism Administration, told the Bulletin that there had been a fall in the number of Russians crossing into Georgia through the Kazbegi border this year.

“Many Russians have changed their holiday plans because the road was closed,” he told the Bulletin.

And the impact in Tbilisi has been felt immediately.

Bariiat from Dagestan in Russia’s North Caucasus, said that scores of reservations at her guesthouse had been cancelled.

“Our neighbours are all complaining that Russian tourists are not arriving as usual”, she said.

For Russians looking to drive to Georgia for their annual summer holiday the only route is on a long detour via Azerbaijan.

After a two-week vacation in Georgia with his wife, Pasha had to drive back to Lermontov in the Stavropol region of southern Russia.

“Our return journey to Russia through Baku will be 1,000km longer than our outward journey,” he said.

The closure of the Upper Lars checkpoint has not only hit Georgia. Armenia has also complained that goods from Russia have been unable to get through because of the landslide.

Emergency workers have said that they expect the landslide to be cleared next week and the road re-opened.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)