Susanna Safaryan, chairwoman of the State Tourism Committee, gave an interview to ARMENPRESS, talking about the topic.
-Mrs. Safaryan, what tourism result do we have with Georgia?
-According to the data of 2018, we hosted over 300.000 visitors from Georgia. The purposes of these visits are various, both for tourism and other reasons. There is an interest towards the country, we are trying to intensify the relations so that we will have much more visits from Georgia to Armenia and vice versa as a result of awareness raising in the two countries. We are trying to intensify the relations of privates in the two countries in order to be able to record a result. Compared to 2017, the figure of 2018 has declined nearly by 1%.
-Conditioned by the situation in Georgia, Armenia can serve as a corridor by helping the two friendly states, Russian tourists can visit Georgia via Armenia. What actions is the Committee taking in this regard?
-Without targeting tourists we are trying to show a unique attitude to each tourist who visits Armenia. If at this moment increase in number of Russian tourists is expected due to the current circumstances, and like the recent events show, our actions will be to welcome them at best, serve, and form special offers for the Russian market. Maybe they will be able to spend several days in Armenia in the transit area. The situation is such that the two countries view Armenia as a transit destination. In this case our actions will be directed for making this transit more smoothly. In other words, those tourists who will have problems with waiting for the flight time, we will offer them to spend some time in Yerevan, maybe a city tour will be organized for them.
-There are many talks on having joint tour packages with Georgia. To what extent this initiative has been implemented, are there any joint tour packages and are you going to expand them in the future?
-The formation and sale of packages are made through the private companies. The private companies have started to work with each other in the previous years, the joint proposals both by the Armenian and Georgian sides are the evidence of this. Both the Armenian and Georgian sides consider mutual visits if a group wants. We should try to strengthen this direction so th...
