Georgian Deputy Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Mariam Kvrivishvili
Tbilisi: Georgia has seen a great uptake in the number of tourists from the Gulf region including Qatar in the past few years after they removed the visa requirement for GCC residents. The number of tourists visiting the country from Doha has increased and more Georgians are using Qatar Airways to connect to the world. This was disclosed by the Georgian Deputy Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Mariam Kvrivishvili. She is in charge of the Georgian National Tourism Administration and Civil Aviation Agency of Georgia.
“There is no visa requirement for those who have residence permits in any of the Gulf countries. You straight away enter Georgian border, which was the whole idea of ensuring that we’ve made travel experiences to Georgia easier. Our top priority markets are indeed the Gulf countries,” Kvrivishvili spoke to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the Tbilisi Silk Road Forum held recently at the Georgian capital.
“After the decision to remove the visa requirement, we straightaway saw an increase in demand. We saw that airlines doubled, and tripled flight frequencies. And we also saw that these destinations where we didn’t have direct flight operations before were added to our aviation market. So smooth and flexible visa policy and immigration policy was one of our most successful stories when it comes to getting a bigger market share from the GCC countries,” she added.
Speaking about the visitors from and to Doha the Deputy Minister said: “Doha is one of the strongest operated networks to Georgia. We have 14 flights weekly, and we see a lot of people from Qatar visiting Georgia, and a lot of Georgians are using Qatar Airways to connect to the rest of the world. We also have massive flight operations from the UAE. We have direct flight operations from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain. So, the network is growing, and direct flights generate more tourists coming into our country.”
This year has seen the Georgian tourism sector bouncing back strongly after the global slump during the pandemic. Data published by the Georgian Civil Aviation Agency showed Georgia’s three international airports served 4,529,466 passengers during the nine months, marking a 37 percent year-on-year increase.
“Georgia stands out on an international world travel map as one of the fastest-growing destinations. We have the fastest recovery speed worldwide when it comes to comparing ourselves to how we were before the pandemic. We have already exceeded the 2019 figures. We’re very proud that the strategy we’ve put together already paid back, and we see that it has been a very successful action plan that was implemented by the Government of Georgia. We already obtained $1.8bn in revenues from tourism, which is 23% more than what we obtained in the same period in 2019. We’re very optimistic and it’s already obvious that this year will be a record-breaking year for our Georgian tourism industry,” Kvrivishvili concluded.
