Georgia Beyond Arrivals : Emerging Opportunities for Georgian Firms in Tourism Value Chains

Georgia’s current tourism offering is oriented toward low-spending neighboring markets and,although there is growth in high-spend global markets, the share is still very small. The majority of international visitor trips are from Georgia’s neighbor...

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Main Author: World Bank Group
Format: Report
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/264181575569238865/Georgia-Beyond-Arrivals-Emerging-Opportunities-for-Georgian-Firms-in-Tourism-Value-Chains
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33166
id okr-10986-33166
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-331662021-05-25T09:31:36Z Georgia Beyond Arrivals : Emerging Opportunities for Georgian Firms in Tourism Value Chains World Bank Group TOURISM SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN MICROENTERPRISES DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY Georgia’s current tourism offering is oriented toward low-spending neighboring markets and,although there is growth in high-spend global markets, the share is still very small. The majority of international visitor trips are from Georgia’s neighboring countries—Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey. This strong regional footprint is partly attributable to Georgia’s reputation during Soviet times as a recreational destination. Proximity, low prices, familiarity and language have contributed to this strong position. However, of Georgia’s top 15 source markets, tourists from Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey have the lowest average total trip expenditure and make the shortest trips. Although Georgia has seen very strong growth from China and India, arrivals to Georgia from the top global tourism source markets1 in 2018 represented only 7.3 percent of arrivals to the country. Georgia’s government is targeting high-growth, high-spend source markets. In 2015, the Government of Georgia (GoG) launched “Georgia Tourism 2025”; a 10-year vision and strategic plan for increasing the value and importance of tourism for the benefit of the country’s economy and ultimately its citizens. The plan—developed with support from the World Bank Group—included infrastructure development, country promotion, service quality improvement and tourism product diversification. Building on this plan, in 2018, GoG developed a marketing, branding and promotional strategy to communicate Georgia’s brand positioning, visual and verbal identity guidelines, and promotional objectives and target high growth, high-spend source markets. As Georgia’s source markets evolve, new GVC structures necessary to serve those markets will alsoemerge. GoG has identified 26 key source markets based on accessibility, economic factors, culturalrelations, and other factors such as the size of diaspora, historical ties and language barriers. A shift towards these new markets will also correspond to changes in consumer behavioral trends and tastes. This, coupled with global industry trends will see new value chain structures emerge, emphasizing activities with differing competitive forces, and presenting differing opportunities to create and retain value. Georgian firms may need support to respond to changes in emerging tourism GVCs and compete for higher-value-added activities. The report asks and answers two questions: i) How are emerging trends changing the structure of Tourism GVCs and how can Georgian firms benefit from these changes? ii) What policy reforms, capital investment or skills development is needed to increase Georgia’s value chain competitiveness in each of these key tourism offerings? 2020-01-13T21:47:42Z 2020-01-13T21:47:42Z 2019-12-27 Report http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/264181575569238865/Georgia-Beyond-Arrivals-Emerging-Opportunities-for-Georgian-Firms-in-Tourism-Value-Chains http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33166 English CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Economic & Sector Work Europe and Central Asia Georgia
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic TOURISM
SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES
GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN
MICROENTERPRISES
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
spellingShingle TOURISM
SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES
GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN
MICROENTERPRISES
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
World Bank Group
Georgia Beyond Arrivals : Emerging Opportunities for Georgian Firms in Tourism Value Chains
geographic_facet Europe and Central Asia
Georgia
description Georgia’s current tourism offering is oriented toward low-spending neighboring markets and,although there is growth in high-spend global markets, the share is still very small. The majority of international visitor trips are from Georgia’s neighboring countries—Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey. This strong regional footprint is partly attributable to Georgia’s reputation during Soviet times as a recreational destination. Proximity, low prices, familiarity and language have contributed to this strong position. However, of Georgia’s top 15 source markets, tourists from Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey have the lowest average total trip expenditure and make the shortest trips. Although Georgia has seen very strong growth from China and India, arrivals to Georgia from the top global tourism source markets1 in 2018 represented only 7.3 percent of arrivals to the country. Georgia’s government is targeting high-growth, high-spend source markets. In 2015, the Government of Georgia (GoG) launched “Georgia Tourism 2025”; a 10-year vision and strategic plan for increasing the value and importance of tourism for the benefit of the country’s economy and ultimately its citizens. The plan—developed with support from the World Bank Group—included infrastructure development, country promotion, service quality improvement and tourism product diversification. Building on this plan, in 2018, GoG developed a marketing, branding and promotional strategy to communicate Georgia’s brand positioning, visual and verbal identity guidelines, and promotional objectives and target high growth, high-spend source markets. As Georgia’s source markets evolve, new GVC structures necessary to serve those markets will alsoemerge. GoG has identified 26 key source markets based on accessibility, economic factors, culturalrelations, and other factors such as the size of diaspora, historical ties and language barriers. A shift towards these new markets will also correspond to changes in consumer behavioral trends and tastes. This, coupled with global industry trends will see new value chain structures emerge, emphasizing activities with differing competitive forces, and presenting differing opportunities to create and retain value. Georgian firms may need support to respond to changes in emerging tourism GVCs and compete for higher-value-added activities. The report asks and answers two questions: i) How are emerging trends changing the structure of Tourism GVCs and how can Georgian firms benefit from these changes? ii) What policy reforms, capital investment or skills development is needed to increase Georgia’s value chain competitiveness in each of these key tourism offerings?
format Report
author World Bank Group
author_facet World Bank Group
author_sort World Bank Group
title Georgia Beyond Arrivals : Emerging Opportunities for Georgian Firms in Tourism Value Chains
title_short Georgia Beyond Arrivals : Emerging Opportunities for Georgian Firms in Tourism Value Chains
title_full Georgia Beyond Arrivals : Emerging Opportunities for Georgian Firms in Tourism Value Chains
title_fullStr Georgia Beyond Arrivals : Emerging Opportunities for Georgian Firms in Tourism Value Chains
title_full_unstemmed Georgia Beyond Arrivals : Emerging Opportunities for Georgian Firms in Tourism Value Chains
title_sort georgia beyond arrivals : emerging opportunities for georgian firms in tourism value chains
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2020
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/264181575569238865/Georgia-Beyond-Arrivals-Emerging-Opportunities-for-Georgian-Firms-in-Tourism-Value-Chains
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33166
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