With the purpose of enhancing good governance and sustainable development in the municipalities of Georgia, on February 1-5, together with the National Association of Local Authorities of Georgia (NALAG), we conducted an online training course for 168 representatives from all municipalities of Georgia, in order to introduce the concept of the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System (PMES) as well as the application of the corresponding informational platform software, ensuring better measurement of the municipalities’ effectiveness, under the EU-funded project entitled “Networking for Efficiency and Development (N4ED).”

We recently started a new project, the goal of which is to advance e-work market development in Georgia by assessing the e-work market demand among enterprises from the five biggest cities of Georgia, and helping to match this demand with the rural labor force of the selected municipalities under the EU-funded program “Improving Rural Development in Georgia (IRDG),” which is being implemented by UNDP.

The number of international travelers declined by 94.5% in January compared to the same period of 2020, while the number of international visitors fell by 93.6% and the number of international tourists fell by 91.9%; In January 2021, the year over year Hotel Price Index decreased by 33.8% in Adjara and by 28.5% in Samtskhe-Javakheti; The number of ski-lift users in Georgia grew significantly, by an annual average rate of 21%, from the 2014-2015 season up to and including the 2018-2019 season. However, compared to the 2018-19 season, the number of ski-lift users dropped by 20% during the 2019-2020 season, due to the looming COVID-19 pandemic which effectively brought the season to an early finish. Thereafter, the 2020-2021 season has been cancelled outright due to the ongoing epidemiological crisis; Sales per skiing day demonstrated significant growth from the 2014-2015 winter season up to and including the 2018-2019 winter season, growing by 33% annually on average in this period. It even registered modest growth (4%) in the 2019-2020 season.

In Georgia, the average cost of a room in a 3-star hotel was 118 GEL per night in January 2021, while the average cost of a room in a 4-star hotel in Georgia was 188 GEL per night and the average cost of a room in a guesthouse was 72 GEL per night.