Skift Take
A fountain with free flowing vodka? Advertise this and Georgia’s tourism industry will surely flourish, although its seaside location and noted hospitality has also succeeded in attracting top global investors.
Georgia's Black Sea resort of Batumi was once a bleak site: Roads were dotted with potholes, the city was pitch dark at night, running water was scarce and the city's best hotel was infested with rats. Today Batumi glitters with neon lights and luxury high-rise hotels dot its skyline; soon the city will even boast a fountain flowing with Georgian grape vodka.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="350"] Batumi, Georgia is reinventing itself as a tourist destination to improve the domestic economy. Photo by Olga.[/caption]
The transformation of the ancient city of 180,000 near the border with Turkey is a vivid example of Georgia's drive to capitalize on its tourism potential, boosting the economy of an ex-Soviet nation where roughly one person in five lives in poverty. The government has attracted top foreign investors, such as U.S. real estate magnate Donald Trump, to build hotels and develop and renovate tourist sites. And it has aggressively marketed Georgia as a tourism hot spot.
The project capitalizes not only on Georgia's geographical riches — the Black Sea, the soaring Caucasus mountains and its ancient cities — but also on the very essence of the Georgian culture: hospitality itself. Here, refusing to come into one's home and sitting down at a food-laden table c
