Azerbaijan and Armenia applaud Georgian Russophobes
After the cessation of air traffic with Georgia, Russian tour operators stopped selling trips to this country, and the flow of tourists to neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan increased.
The executive director of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, Maya Lomidze, announced this at a press conference in Moscow, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Judging by the reviews of travel companies throughout Russia, many travel companies in many cities were quite actively selling tour packages to Georgia; they were in demand.
And I lost business due to the fact that the direction was closed. There are currently no sales of tour packages. You can only get to Georgia with connections, not only through Minsk. They travel through Yerevan and through Baku and even through Istanbul. This flow exists in some form, but we are unable to estimate the capacity of this flow. I don’t know how many people are now traveling from Russia to Georgia on vacation.
As for the money that the country lost, in my opinion it was obvious, because Russia was one of the main markets for Georgia. It’s clear that the country has lost, how much – we don’t have the invoice to somehow adequately assess it,” she said.
According to her, the demand for holidays in Georgia remains, but it cannot be assessed.
“Travel companies have requests, tourists ask if they can buy a package and so on. They ask both the excursion part and the Black Sea coast of Georgia.
They are usually offered an alternative. The most popular alternative for those tourists who were planning to go to Georgia are other republics in the Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, from where, perhaps, they themselves travel to Georgia.
We don't know about this. We're talking about tour packages.
Cyprus, partly our Black Sea coast and partly Türkiye are also in demand. But it cannot be said that all of these listed areas experienced some kind of fantastic boom due to the fact that Georgia was closed and there was a significant increase - with the exception of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
This is where the growth is obvious - about plus 10 percent compared to last year due to these additional tourists. In all other areas, we do not see any particular boom due to reorientation. There are requests, but their number is quite difficult to estimate,” Lomidze said.
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