Tourist boom for Adjara

The Messenger, Georgia
Sept 2 2005

Officials credit television spots for brining Azeri, Ukrainian and
most of all Armenian tourists to Georgia’s Black Sea resorts
By M. Alkhazashvili

One of the Saakashvili administration’s key economic priorities
is the development of tourism in Adjara. The summer season is of
special importance for this coastal region, as it provides much of the
population with the income they need to subsist on for the entire year.

Many believe that Adjarans were so quick to oppose their local despotic
leader Aslan Abashidze in May of last year because they feared that
the conflict between the latter and the central government might have,
along with other negative consequences, ruined the 2004 tourist season.

This year’s resort season will last until October 25, but it can be
said that Adjara has already received the majority of its tourists.
The local and central governments, as well as leaders in the tourism
industry have declared this season a great success.

In 2004, less than 20,000 people vacationed in Batumi, but this year
that indicator reached 65,000. In addition to domestic vacationers,
the number of foreigners visiting Batumi also significantly
increased. According to Tavisupali Gazeti, the main influx of foreign
tourists to Adjara came from Armenia, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Germany,
Denmark, Norway, the United States, Turkey and Iran.

The list of countries is impressive, though some of the aforementioned
states, namely those in the West, produced only a small amount of
tourists. Understandably, while developing strategies to entice foreign
vacationers, the main accent is placed on neighboring countries.

On the initiative of the Adjara Tourism and Resorts Department,
a 35-second promotional clip was produced and aired on Armenian,
Azerbaijani and Ukrainian television. As the head of the department,
Temur Zoidze states, this commercial played a key role in the
attraction of tourists from abroad. “This effort yielded many tourists
from foreign countries. We have a program to target Ukraine and if
it is implemented, many more tourists will come from that country in
the future,” he said, as quoted by Tavisupali Gazeti.

A major share of foreign tourists in Adjara this year came from
Armenia. This is due to two basic factors – it is the nearest coastal
area to that country and, for understandable historical reasons,
Armenians do not feel comfortable visiting the more prestigious
resorts of the Turkish Black Sea coast, as the elite of many other
regional countries do. In the future, Adjara will continue its
policy of attracting tourists from Armenia and in so doing, create
new opportunities for cooperation between the countries.

It should be pointed out that the president of breakaway Abkhazia,
Sergei Baghapsh, also attempted to entice tourists from Armenia.
During a mid-August visit to Moscow, he is reported to have held
a closed door meeting with Armenian businessmen where he offered
them to become actively engaged in investing in the Abkhaz resort
business. Though the Sokhumi authorities categorically deny these
reports, the Georgian government speculates that Baghapsh focused on
Armenian businessmen because he knew that their deeper involvement
in the resort industry in Abkhazia would cause great irritation
in Tbilisi.