Kristine Meskhadze, owner of Boutique Apartment Signature Hotel in Kutaisi, says that bookings are up by 10% for summer. However, as she mentioned in an interview with BM.GE, the cancellation of flights by Wizz Air had a great impact on the load growth during the tourist season, accordingly the hotel is fully loaded for this summer.
"Like last year, we keep the number of tourists stable. During the summer period, the hotel is fully booked, however, we offer additional services to our customers to maintain existing flows and attract new ones. It's not easy, but the market fluctuations pushed us to act. In terms of percentage, in spring we had a decrease of 20-30%, but in summer, we have a 10% increase compared to the previous year.
Last year, there were more tourists from the Persian Gulf countries, while we try to focus on European ones. In terms of percentage, the share of tourists from the Persian Gulf countries is 35-40%, followed by tourists from Europe in the range of 20-30%, Kazakhstan-Belarus - 15%, Georgia - 10% and others - 10%. In addition, this year we had tourists from Turkey due to the appointment of the flight to Istanbul, which I think will be an interesting contingent for us in the future", says the owner of the hotel.
According to her, it was planned to increase the prices in the hotel, but the company had to offer discounts to the customers. However, speaking of challenges, Boutique Apartment Signature claims that staff shortage is still a significant challenge for the sector.
