Georgia is a member of the UNWTO Executive Council (2021-2025)

Georgia is the host of the UNWTO World Tourism Day 2024

Rural tourism

• Explore the possibility of organizing joint initiatives in particular on a regional scale (I.e, Caucasian scope: Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan).
• UNWTO Rural Tourism Development Programme - Best Tourism Villages of the World: International Label; Tourism Villages Upgrade Programme; Best Tourism Villages Network
  • Mestia is one of the UNWTO Best Tourism Villages
• UNWTO together with the FAO Mountain Partnership Secretariat launched a publication on Sustainable Mountain Tourism on the occasion of International Mountain Day 2021, in which a chapter is dedicated to Mass Tourism Impact on World Heritage: A Case of Upper Svaneti Transformation, Georgia.

Sustainable development and management of tourism

Protection of the natural and cultural heritage is one of the priorities of the National Tourism Strategy 2025. Also, Georgia has launched a National Strategy for Sustainable Development until 2030, which reflects the importance given to SDG.

• Support Georgia in the improvement process of the measurement of tourism’s impact on sustainability for better decision-making processes at the local level through the UNWTO International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories (INSTO). 

Enhance the tourism offer of the country

Georgia is putting emphasis on the promotion of the destination based on its cultural and natural heritage, to attract more tourists from the high-spending countries. In addition, one of the goals stated in NTS 2025 is to improve the ability to get more data about the high-spending markets, their trends, and peculiarities

• Promotion of destinations: Support the promotion of Georgia through the organization of a Google Masterclass on improving the promotion of destinations through Google Analytics.
• Collecting Data and Market Research: UNWTO can support Georgia by providing training or guidance on the collection of tourism data (Through Academy or TECO).

Education & Training

Skills of the tourism workforce, along with the creation of jobs in tourism, is one of the challenges of the country, in line with the wish to upgrade the quality of their tourism offer.

• Support through the UNWTO.Academy: UNWTO can support Georgia with tourism educational programmes, and tailored-made trainings. 
• Trainings: Explore the possibility of organizing tailored-made trainings on the elaboration of a tourism strategy, development of tourism products, marketing strategy, and promotion etc.

Entrepreneurship & digital transformation

One of the priorities in the national tourism strategy is to enhance the competitiveness of the country through the digitalization of the sector, in particular through digital bookings and digital payment systems in the tourism sector.

• Introduce the UNWTO Start-up Competition, the world’s largest startup competition in tourism
• Introduce the Innovation Hubs Network worldwide

Attraction of foreign investment

One of the key priorities of National Tourism Strategy 2025 is to attract foreign private investments, in particular in tourism.

• UNWTO & fDi intelligence from the Financial Times - UNWTO Members can have limited access to world-class digital investment platforms at no cost

National Tourism Strategy 2015-25

Vision

By 2025, be known as a premier, year-round, high quality destination, centered on its unique cultural and natural heritage, world-class customer service, and timeless tradition of hospitality

The focus will be on the quality and diversity of visitor arrivals, not total number of visitors.

Objectives:

• Respect, enhance, and protect Georgia’s natural and cultural heritage
• Create unique and authentic visitor experiences centered on those natural and cultural assets
• Enhance competitiveness, through delivery of world-class visitor services
• Simplify the transportation of tourists from high spending economies.
• Expand and enhance Georgia’s ability to collect and analyze tourism data and measure industry performance
• Enhance the business environment, to facilitate increased foreign and domestic investment
• Build partnerships between government, industry, non-governmental organizations, and communities that will be needed to achieve all of the above