Hotel manager Shalva Alaverdashvili estimates that Putin's aviation ban has an impact on the Black Sea coast, but the fact is that the country has endured the air embargo.
According to him, there were other problems in 2019 as well, which resulted the loss of high-income tourists for the state as well as the private sector.
“During the last year there were frequent occurrences, when visitors arriving in Georgia had been turned out from the border. For example, I mean the Dubai market, which was a trend for us a few years ago. However, now our direction for them has become totally unacceptable. We expelled citizens of Dubai as the representatives of other countries. This is a fact and indicated in numbers”, Shalva Alaverdashvili said.
BM.GE has reviewed the statistics, which shows that the number of visitors from the UAE is down 15.3% y-o-y in 2019.
“Dubai is a place where information is spread very quickly and any negative things that are happening in Georgia, including the problems related to the border crossing is spread there. We lost one of these successful markets, from which high-income visitors arrived to Georgia for 2-3 days. In addition, we started “fighting" and expelling Iranian visitors after 2017. Consequently, I could not understand what we wanted”, says Shalva Alaverdashvili.
According to official statistics, visits from Iran to Georgia halved in 2019. In particular, compared to 2018 (291 070 visits) the number of visits from Iran decreased by 51.2% last year.
