The FINANCIAL — Travel and Tourism is perhaps the largest global industry, with 10% of global GDP earning over 6.8 trillion USD and it is growing, despite the economic down-turns engulfing most countries.
The spin-offs from tourism, especially to emerging markets, is enormous: it generates employment and puts more money into pockets of those who sell meat and vegetables, those who provide transportation, tour guide services, into bars and restaurants, musicians and artistes, souvenir sellers and therapists and the occasional donations tourists make to various charities. It is an all-encompassing industry which, unlike others, constantly offers a level of satisfaction to those who wish to take time off from the mundane realities of life. Adequately defined, tourism, different from the multitude of business travellers who globe-trot and mostly inhabit the 4 to 5 star hotels, is founded on an in-built belief system that experiencing other lands and cultures extols the soul and widens mental horizons.
When I was first assigned by IFC/World Bank to look at small and medium business development in the South Pacific, my strategic response was to increase its capacity to turn the South Pacific’s pristine pure nature of sandy beaches, mountains, rivers, totally unpolluted and scented air, it’s simple and untainted culture and a sublime tranquil nature into an active and financially rewarding bundle of resources, without disturbing the simple lifestyles and joys of a beautiful people.
We decided to focus on eco-tourism in the distant and far-flung islands. Maxim Carlot Korman, the then Prime Minister of Vanuatu, bought the idea and decided to turn his “untouched paradise” into a land of genuine adventure, relaxation, health and affordable luxury. In a spate of some 30 months, with IFC’s leadership, a run-down hotel in Port Vila, the capital city, was turned into a first class 4-star hotel, to be operated by Le Meridien, and other equally run-down resorts such as Erakor were refurbished while some 30 little eco resorts sprung up in idyllic islands from Tanna to Espiritu Santo. For a small population of some 250,000 people across several, sparsely populated islands, the sudden tourist inflow injected a measurable boost in income and show-cased to the rest of the South Pacific that Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful philosophy is indeed workable, and financially rewarding. Today, right across the entire South Pacific, tourism has come to stay as an important income generator, with low-budget, well designed and well serviced eco tourist resorts.
Georgia, wedged between the Black Sea and the Caspian sea, filled with the wonders of nature, thousands of years of entrenched culture, is very much an “untouched paradise” which has in one country everything the entire South Pacific has, except the active volcano in Tanna island. Unlike most emerging countries in Asia, Africa or South America, Georgia has a potent and heady concoction of seductions which can be fascinating to travellers who seek clearly defined and life changing experiences. Tourism for long has become a stale and somewhat boring break-way for most visitors who save during the whole year, hunt for budget deals, rush from one place to another to fill their post-cards back home and return to contemplate the next year’s episode of the same routine. There is however another set of travellers who wish to take more time off, spend more, and achieve a total experience of having been with people, their culture and the tranquillity of what nature offers in abundance, in the case of Georgia, in all its majesty.
Bulgaria-born Tony Toshev, the General Manager of Sheraton in Tbilisi is a skilful and experienced hotelier with some 23 years of hotel management experience behind him. He and many of his associates in the hotel industry are focussed on delivering the right level of occupancy and profits to their owners, but are fully conscious of the fact that city hotels need to continue to work hard and struggle unless tourism is a well-spread industry throughout Georgia which can provide the big hotels the spill-over from regional-based tourism drive.
Taking tourism to the villages requires, first of all, that there are idyllic locations which offer an abundance of nature. Georgia has it all. There must also be a fuller understanding of what village and nature based tourism can bring to rural economies, over the short and long term, in terms of energising the villages and their direct inputs to servicing the tourism industry. The real trigger is in innovating the tourism industry in the villages that takes into account, from one location to another, the unique attractions a resort will have in terms of mountain springs, magnetic fields, natural spas, cleansing clay, black and white rivers, national parks, beaches and wild life, wines, culture, music, traditions, castles and churches and every conceivable facet of a village or region which can be offered to visitors as unique Georgian experience. Georgian cuisine is extraordinary and its best wines are world class. Its people display a rugged hardiness with a contrasting gentle and hospitable demeanour – all of which can be cleverly packaged and marketed to high-end, discerning visitors.
Developing a unique theme for Georgia as an exotic land of nature, culture and people and allowing visitors to intensely share and experience this theme is one end of the marketing spectrum. The other end is for investors in the tourism industry to believe in the proposition and develop rural-based eco-tourism resorts, carefully designed to provide that special ambience, and make the visitors come again and again. In marketing jargon, Georgia needs a Unique Selling Proposition which differentiates it from the rest in the Caucuses region.
Specialised eco and health-based tourism is a perfect menu for high-end tourists willing to spend. Small, well designed low budget resorts, providing top end service at higher prices in personalised and intimate surroundings is a financial winner in places like Bali in Indonesia. Indonesia’s Adrian Sakar, a one-time journalist who turned eco resort millionaire, has proved it with his boutique resorts such as Amandari, Amanpuri and Caracosa. When I drive past Ananuri, Passanauri and Gudauri in Georgia, I am always reminded of Amandari and Amanpuri resorts and wonder why no one has taken the challenge of building them in this country.
Discussion about this post