Helping to Build Georgia’s Future: Gulf Air

Interview

Five-star Gulf Air Airlines continues flight operation from Bahrain to Georgia with weekly three flights. During Summer Season, when inbound tourism traffic reaches to significantly pick figures, Gulf Air has added additional flights to Georgian route to facilitate brining more and more tourists to Georgia from the Middle Eastern markets.

Gulf Air is a five star airline, offering premium class as well as full service economy class product to its customers. The journey between Bahrain and Tbilisi takes just two hours, which makes the flight experience even more pleasant for those who are connecting to destinations like Thailand, Sri Lanka or Manila with Gulf Air from Tbilisi. We spoke to Mariam Kvrivishvili, General Director of Voyager, GSA of flydubai and Gulf Air in Georgia.

“We are very proud to represent Gulf Air on Georgian market and have possibility to contribute into our country’s tourism and aviation industry’s development” she told us. “we are delighted to see that with Gulf Air flights, more and more travers come to explore Georgia, and not only from Bahrain: there is a flow of tourists, which travels from Saudi Arabia and Oman, Kuwait, UAE, etc spreading the flow of tourists from the Middle East to Georgia. At the end of 2017, the flight will remain at three times per week. Various promotional activities were held to raise the popularity/awareness of Georgia in Bahrain, before and after launching the flights. We hope to be able to bring even more tourists to Georgia, create experiences that would make them want to come back, recommend to family or friends - so that we could do our part for the national economy.”

What are your future plans?

We’re carrying out many promotional activities with the Georgian government, Ministry of Economy and National Tourism Administration. We discuss mutual projects as well as our own structures, and we also discuss how we can unite our powers to make our country more popular and in-demand.

We continue promotion and marketing campaigns, not only marking Georgia as an attractive four season travel destination, but today we aim to position our country as top destination for MICE and Medical tourism, too.

Voyager, being leading inbound and outbound tour operator in Georgia (at the same time being GSA for Gulf Air and flydubai) - was proudly the first company to start working and investing to make Georgia known as an option travel destination for the Middle Eastern travelers.

What can you say about competition in the country/abroad?

I believe, competition nowadays is healthy between the key players of the industry, however not that healthy when it comes to medium and small sized ones due to absence of any tourism regulations.

It is nice to see several companies operating in the same area, be they touristic companies or airlines. The participation is far greater than competition and leads to more people discovering our country. We as Voyager, are not trying to compete with any Georgian companies, in fact, we’re trying to cooperate with them so that any company, i.e. one from Azerbaijan oriented on the same group as we are bidding for, is persuaded to visit Georgia instead of Azerbaijan. We’re happy that Georgia is developing so well, and we consistently ask hotels and businesses to keep up with the changes to keep that development on track.

What expectations did you have when you first came to the Georgian market?

The Ministry of Economy is to thank for Gulf Air becoming interested in the Georgian market. I remember our first meeting with Gulf Air, it was a national tender, and there were five companies from Georgia including Voyager that took part in the bidding. I had to work with top management of the airline through this challenging bidding process which lasted more than 4 month. I was proud to come across with the pre-preparation program that Ministry of Economy and United Airports of Georgia had done for an airline and private sector like us. The whole head office had high expectations for Georgia as their new route before flight launch.

Today we are proud to stand in the position to serve more Georgian and international tourists to and from our country to obtain more memorable experiences with Gulf Air Airlines.

Liza Nadibaidze