Whilst summarising the 2016 summer tourist season, the Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia, Dimitri Kumsishvili, stated: “About 41.5% of the overall number of Georgian hotels started operating from 2013 to 2015 which means that practically half of the hotels now operating in Georgia were opened during the office of the Georgian Dream coalition.”

verified the accuracy of this statement.

According to the data of the National Statistics Office of Georgia, a total of 1,225 hotels and hotel-like facilities were functioning in Georgia as of 2015. Of this number, 239 started operating in 2015 alone.

 Number of Hotels and Hotel-Like Facilities

As the table reflects, the number of hotels and hotel-like facilities opened from 2013 to 2015 is about 448 which, as of 2015, represented 36.6% of the operational facilities. The growth in three years following 2012 amounted to 57.7%. According to the information provided by the Georgian National Tourism Administration, a total of 508 hotels were opened in the period from 2013 to 2015, which is 41.5% of the overall number of hotels. The Georgian National Tourism Administration believes that the difference between the growth recorded in the aforementioned period (448) and the number of hotels opened is due to the closure of some of the hotels which were open back in 2012. In the case of hotels only, the growth amounted to 236 units which was 35.8% of the already functioning hotels.

A total of 508 hotels and hotel-like facilities started operating from 2013 to 2015 which, as of 2015, represented 41.5% of the already functioning facilities. However, it should also be pointed out that some of the hotels and hotel-like facilities functioning in 2012 stopped working in the following years. Hence, the growth of the number of these facilities was 448 units in three years, which was 36.6% of the facilities functioning as of 2015. In the case of hotels only, the growth amounted to 236 units which was 35.8% of the already functioning hotels. As a result, the number of housing facilities opened from 2013 to 2015 is slightly greater than one-third of the overall number of such facilities as of 2015.

It should be noted that despite our request, the National Statistics Office of Georgia was unable to provide us with the data for 2016. According to their information, these data will only be available on 31 August 2017. However, this delay is irrelevant to our study as the Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia talked about the situation of 2015.