A 5-star, premium class hotel Pontus Rotana Resort & Spa Gonio is being built in Gonio, which will be the largest hotel on the Black Sea coast, making it an ideal opportunity for those looking to invest in Batumi. The management of the hotel project is carried out by the Rotana brand with an international reputation, and its exclusive partner is the Georgian development company "Pontus Development".
Philip Barnes, CEO of company "Rotana” told BMGTV, that the business started in Abu Dhabi, 32 years ago, now includes 77 hotels in 12 different countries.
According to him, the brand -Rotana - is absolutely flawless in Georgia, with its location and architecture.
"I first worked in the region back in 2006-2007 and I was responsible for the whole of Middle East and I was astounded at the warmth and the friendliness throughout the countries of the region and that's what Rotana has built into it. When I talk about the competitors and talk about the big brands, they're American, they're British, they come from all different parts of the world, while we come from the region and that's our competitive advantage, we understand the region, we want to be a part of the region. I may say we're in the hotel business, whereas many of them are in the business of hotels, which are two different things.
I think, that when you go through our hotels and you meet our people, you have sense of being part of the region and if you look at our the people who work within Rotana, many of whom are our employees for 10, 15, 20 years. They are from all over the region.
We have a lot of development projects, particularly in Saudi Arabia. At this point, I want to say we have eight operating hotels and we have another eight or nine actually on the development table, that are going to happen in the next 3 -5 years. We've just opened a hotel in Medina, so we have a lot happening in Saudi. We also have quite a lot happening in Egypt, we have a number of projects, we've got a project opening in this month and we have another two or three projects within Egypt, so there's a lot happening in those areas specifically, but then there are other things that we're doing, we've just announced a project in Islamabad which will be our first entry into Pakistan.
I'm hope that it will be huge market and we have wonderful partners there, just as we have here. Partnership is key to us, if we don't have the right partners we're not going anywhere.
We're also opening two projects in suburban London later this year and again I'm really optimistic, we have a meeting with that owner on Wednesday back in Abu Dabi. I’m really optimistic that it will bring us to the cities throughout the UK, like Liverpool, Manchester and etc.
So, specifically Rotana is absolutely the perfect brand here, building, its location, everything about it … this is the luxury,” says Barnes.
According to Chief Operating Officer Eddie Tanus, building Pontus Rotana Resort & Spa Gonio is like raising a child.
As of him, strategic cooperation with Pontus and identification of the Middle East as a region with great potential is very important for Georgia, further highlighting the attractive prospects for Gonio real estate investment.
"In all of the interviews you've seen in the last few months, when we talk about this project, the first thing, we talk about is how proud we are to be associated with Pontus. Whenever, we go into an area, where we haven't operated before, choosing the right partner, I would say is even more important. I think the strategic approach of Pontus identifying the Middle East, as a very strong potential region, is very important for Georgia.
We are so lucky, Rotana is carrying out its 47th project, and it does not surprise me, that the development is moving so quickly and it might be accelerated even more. We were kind of closing the season last September and I was looking out of this specific window and seeing the first floor being built and now we come here and we see the building already up in the sky. It's always very exciting. It's like a baby in the making to see the development of the project,“ says the Chief Operating Officer.
The founder and managing director of "Pontus", Irakli Varshalomidze, states that they understand that it will not be easy to manage a hotel with 550 rooms.
According to him, "Rotana" itself will be involved in the management of the hotel.
" From the very beginning, like when we were analyzing the market like we wante to do something special and we wanted to bring something new to the Georgia hospitality market that was the ide and that's how w met with Rotana. We see lots of hospitality international companies from the US and the UK, but there was no company from Middle East with Middle East culture. People from Middle East can bring something new to Georgian market and Georgian culture, this was the the main idea from the very beginning and then, we started meeting people, we started negotiation and that brought us to the table and signed a contract.
From the very beginning, we understand that it's not easy to run the hotel with 550 rooms and you need professionals to do it and the way of collaboration with Rotana is not like franchise collaboration, the property will be fully managed by Rotana team. we will just be part of it to support from like legal part and other organizational part," said Varshalomidze.
According to Nika Bolkvadze, managing director of "Pontus", during the last 7-10 years, Georgia has been getting closer to the countries of the Middle East, be it from a political or economic point of view.
As of him, there was no Arab brand on the market that would meet all demands. Accordingly, seeing the potential, the company capitalized.
“In the last 7 to 10 years, our country Georgia has been going closer and closer with the Middle East countries in terms of politics. In the foreign policies, we see a positive statements from the both governments. Visa regulations were given up, you know in many instances, in terms of economics, we signed the agreement last year with the UEA. It's going to increase the economic turnover and the easiness of doing business with the Middle East. On top of it, we see the increase in the tourism numbers y-o-y, the tourists coming from the GCC countries are increasing so, we saw this potential and we capitalized on it. There was no Arabic brand to capture all of this demand. So, we saw this Market Gap and it was a challenge to find the right partner and then, when we found the right partner from this region, we capitalized on it and launched our joint project in Georgia.
It was an easier choice to go for the residential you know, quicker, less expensive, easier to operate, but before launching the Project, we did a a very large feasibility study, because we believe that it's essential to analyze the market to analyze the demand. We have hired in this process Kushman &Wakefield, an international very reputable company worldwide in terms of the feasibility studies and in terms of the evaluation, so they increase the credibility of our Project. We are the Strategic partners and together with Kushmaman, it was very easy for us to make this choice.
When mentioning the market analysis and potential:
"First, it's about the location. We saw that Batumi was increasing in demand, you know the tourist number have picked in 2023, there were 4 million tourists and it was half a million more than in 2019, so it has recovered and surpassed the point of the tourism in 2019, on top of it, we found out that 40% of all the guests were using hotel as an accommodation. This makes it a best area for investing in Gonio real estate."
And, most importantly, the ratio of accommodation beds per 1,000 visitors is a global average of 15, while the same ratio in Batumi is 5.5 beds per 1,000 visitors. That is, if we triple the number of hotels in Batumi, we will approach the global average, but we will not surpass it. We saw that there was a lot of potential and after that we started thinking about what type of hotel we wanted to build. We followed the research and found that 85% of visitors come to Batumi for leisure, very few people come here for business or medical purposes, and the best type of hotel is a resort hotel - that's why we created Pontus Rotana Resort and Spa in Gonio, where the sea is the cleanest," Bolkvadze says.
Further details about the project can be accessed through the following link: pontus.ge
