The FINANCIAL — Intercontinental, as one of the country’s most popular and leading tour operators, plans to open representative branches in six different foreign countries this year. The company recently added several new travel destinations to its service.
“2012 was one of the most successful years for our company,” said Nino Makhviladze, Director of the company.
“We had very large growth. We served many outbound tourists aiming to visit different foreign countries. We have started working on incoming tourism this year and look forward to the success of this venture,” Makhviladze said.
“We didn’t expect such big growth last year. Intercontinental was offering new destinations to its clients, including the Egyptian resort of Hurghada, which went on to be in great demand. We had been advertising this direction for years. However, the best advertisement is when you actually bring people to a destination who then come back fully satisfied. We had three times as many flights to Hurghada in July-August 2012 than we did in 2011. Last year our company experienced a 40% increase in sales. We expected about 15-20% so the result greatly exceeded our expectations.
“If we compare the results of the current year to 2011, then we might be facing 100% growth. It might seem surprising as such things don’t usually happen in business, but last year made me confident that this year we will have even further growth. We plan to have new hotels and different types of tours on offer in order to make this direction even more attractive. This year we will start selling El Gouna tours, one of the most fashionable resorts in Egypt and a favourite holiday destination of Europeans. They call El Gouna the ‘Venice of Egypt’. It’s a very beautiful resort and will be very interesting to our clients,” Makhviladze said.
“We also plan to actively market the Sokhna destination, which is a relative novelty for Georgian tourists. It is located 100 kilometres from Cairo and is popular on the European market.”
According to Makhviladze there is always big interest from people wanting to see something new.
“People should always have the choice of a new destination. When an operator buys a charter it’s always connected to risk, but if you have the right advertisement plan in place then the business might very well become successful; it just requires quite a large amount of investments. We are a company which invests a great deal in providing new holiday destinations to its customers,” Makhviladze said.
“Europe is always in demand with Georgian tourists. However, during the last few years people have been visiting Egypt more. Good advertising and permanent charter flights are what have determined the popularity of the destination. All population segments have the opportunity to holiday in Egypt,” Makhviladze said.
“What makes our company exceptional is that we treat each of our clients on an individual basis. Despite the fact that we have a high number of customers, we try to treat each of them individually. It’s very important that you are of the utmost professionalism when arranging someone’s holidays. Clients who visit intercontinental know that they are receiving the best advice and service from us.”
“We are starting work on incoming tourism. Interest in Georgia abroad is very high. For that reason we decided to open our own representative offices in six countries in 2013. We want to promote our own products in order not to be dependent on local operators. This will increase the flow of tourists to Georgia, as all of the countries’ offices will try to sell the Georgian product,” Makhviladze said.
A representative office of ours has just been opened in Egypt. We are signing an agreement with the well-known company Thomas Cook. Their company’s representatives visited Georgia and were very interested in Batumi. We will start bringing people to Georgia together from June. We are now working on creating promo clips. We have great experience of market research and doing promotions,” Makhviladze said.
According to Makhviladze, the company will soon be offering a surprise to the Georgian people. An absolutely new destination which is extremely popular and hasn’t ever been offered to the Georgian people before, will soon be available at Intercontinental.
“Until recently we offered people the destination of Goa. Unfortunately however, flights to Goa have been cancelled. We stopped charter flights to this destination as I saw big risk in the country. There were elections in Georgia and the period of political uncertainty affected the activity of outbound tourists leaving the country. I think that in the nearest future, however, we will add Goa to our list of destinations which will then become very popular once again among the younger Georgian tourists. It is a great place which everyone should plan to see at least once in their lives,” Makhviladze said.
“We do not plan to add any new branches to our network within Georgia at the moment; there are many tour operators who are selling our packages. We are going to open a VIP branch specially for our corporate and VIP clients which will be very comfortable and flexible for our loyal clients. Our top management will be moving to the VIP office,” Makhviladze said.
“Being first is harder than simply maintaining the same position. Hard work, high responsibility towards clients and constantly producing new destinations – is what makes us stay on top of the market. Being winner of the Golden Brand award in our category is especially important to us. Many experts have recognised the brand’s success and popularity. The award underlines that the company is implementing their activities well. It’s a very pleasing and honourable fact to be one of the winners of such a superior awards ceremony,” Makhviladze said.
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