After the opening of shopping malls and markets, several food facilities resumed operating with restrictions, but café/ restaurants like hotels are not required to test staff on the Covid-19.
Turnava believes that testing hotel and restaurant employees will be a marketing step and that it will be a guarantee of safety for foreign tourists.
Shalva Alaverdashvili, founder of the Federation of Hotels and Restaurants declares, that the issue is secondary for those countries and tourists, where vaccination is started.
"Now we are working with Israel, where a large part of the population is already vaccinated and they do not care if the staff will be tested here. If I were the government, I would say the same. It is a normal narrative, but it means nothing to tourists. The main thing for tourists is to come to Georgia, receive a good service, visit nice places and so on, which we cannot offer them at this stage. We even cannot tell potential tourists when we will be able to provide this service," Alaverdashvili said.
According to Alaverdashvili, they need a plan that will give potential customers specific answers - when and how they will be able to get them.
"Unlike Gudauri and Bakuriani, privileged hotels that operate in Borjomi or Kakheti with a good load, worth to test employees on COVID-19. However, I must see that opening a hotel is profitable for me, it means receiving bookings, counting, comparing to the increased utilities. Prices are halved in the region and tourists are attracted at a rather low price. This year will be just the opening year and no one should expect a profit. When we count all this and look at how much testing money was included in the costs, I will open it up then. Everything is countable. If I have a load, I will really accept testing expenditures and if I do not, a lot does not depend only on the sum of testing, ”Shalva Alaverdashvili explained.
