Inn Group, the owner of four hotels and two enterprises in Georgia, is further expanding in the country with two more hotels which are due to be opened in Spring 2022 in the Western Georgian city of Kutaisi and the Eastern Georgian town of Gori.
Kutaisi Inn will be a 100-room hotel, while Gori Inn will feature 120 rooms. The CEO of Inn Group, Erekle Kokaia, told Glossy that the opening of both hotels will be an important event in the development of the local hotel and tourism industry.
“As you know, Kutaisi is an interesting tourist destination, not only because of the cultural heritage of the city, but also because of the interesting facilities in its vicinity. As for Gori, we believe that this city is not taking advantage of its maximum tourist potential. Gori Museum, for example, is the most visited of all state museums. Also, many travellers visit Uplistsikhe cave, which is near to Gori. However, these statistics are not felt in Gori. That is why we want all this to be reflected in this city, its economy and its inhabitants,” said Kokaia.
Inn Group was founded with the vision and aim of offering its guests a 4-star hotel experience at an affordable price. It all started in 2015, when a group of like-minded partners decided to establish the 70-room Iveria Inn in Tbilisi, which became so popular that it soon grew to a 100- and then 200-room hotel.
Soon enough another 92-room hotel, called Gudauri Inn, followed in the most popular skiing resort in Georgia – Gudauri. And in just a couple of years, Inn Group became the fastest growing Georgian chain of hotels adding two more hotels to its portfolio – the 21-room Royal Inn and 152-room Bakuriani Inn in Tbilisi and Bakuriani, respectively.
“In addition, we also have two enterprises of aluminium and metal-plastic doors and windows – Alutech Georgia in Kutaisi and Tbilisi. This company became the number one importer of aluminium frames in the market from the very first year and still maintains its leading position,” said Kokaia.
The Covid-19 pandemic affected the activities of Inn Group hotels as well, however the hotel management decided to be involved in the fight against the pandemic and therefore opened the doors of its hotels to people needing to quarantine.
“In total, we hosted 10-20,000 people in our hotels throughout the year,” said Kokaia.
With its location, size and quality, Iveria Inn was the most in-demand quarantine zone in 2020.
“Moreover, when the epidemic situation in the country significantly deteriorated, we were asked to turn a hotel into a Covid Hospital. It was not an easy decision, but as citizens of this country we thought it would be the morally correct step. Consequently, Iveria Inn was able to receive hundreds of patients and most importantly, all of them recovered and we did not have a single fatality,” said Kokaia.
From the spring of 2021 Iveria Inn continued its operations as a commercial hotel again.
“We had to carry out cosmetic repairs and renovate the rooms. Today we offer an even better building to our guests. To our surprise, the summer of 2021 was quite busy. We really did not expect such demand in the first summer, but the fact is that Georgia has not lost its tourist attractiveness.”
“The hotel has two conference rooms. We have an open space where guests can unwind, taste our cuisine or even arrange to hold small parties. For example, we have had cases when Georgian citizens came together with friends to celebrate a birthday. Upon request, we could invite singers in as well,” said Kokaia.
Head of the PR and Marketing Department of Inn Group Lana Bliadze continued this interview by talking about the CSR activities of the group.
Bliadze said that the hotels of the Inn Group started large-scale social activities during the pandemic.
“This was a time when many people were left unemployed. That’s why each of our hotels has helped as many families in the area where the hotel is located as there are number of rooms in it.
“For example, Iveria Inn gave food and household hygiene items to 200 socially-vulnerable families in Varketili as the hotel features 200 rooms. We understand that one company alone cannot change the status quo, but we are ready to do our part to improve living standards. Therefore, we will implement a number of charitable projects in the future,” she said.
In addition, Bliadze said that Alutech Georgia has also responded to the challenges created by the pandemic and lowered the prices of its products.
“When the Covid situation worsened in the country, both branches of Alutech Georgia changed their pricing policy and from that day on we have offered our products to our customers at radically different, low prices, which we think is also a kind of social responsibility,” Bliadze said.
She said that Alutech Georgia has implemented other projects as well as part of the CSR campaign.
“One of the projects that we are proud of is a series of charitable activities called ‘You will be warm in winter’. In the first stage of the project we provided vulnerable families with the highest quality windows and doors. In the second stage, we even took care of our homeless four-legged friends. We gave a car to Zakaria Dolidze, a young man who cared for street dogs for free and had been constantly asking for a car,” she said.
By GLOSSY Magazine
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