Armenia's Tourism is booming.

[Mher]

Re: Armenia's Tourism is booming.

article published a few minutes ago about Syrian repat:

"Small and Medium Entrepreneurship Development Center gave me a 5,000,000 AMD loan at a convenient rate, but moreover, they gave me a direction, taught me the local laws and costumes"

http://repatarmenia.org/eng/garabed-jokarian/#.Uh2h9JzPu8t

Armenia is far from perfect, but it's not gonna get better by us constantly complaining about how doomed and hopeless it is

[Mher]

Re: Armenia's Tourism is booming.

I like your unbiased way of doing analysis, thanks. We don't like our leaders, but it doesn't mean that we must blame them in everything.

Thank you

and yes, and certainly those leaders won't be dethroned, if they see a population too hopeless to even participate in democracy, let alone do anything to endanger their lives. I'm not going to lie, I was very hopeful for Rafi Hovanissian. But he proved very incompetent. In Armenia we essentially have five corrupt parties, and an incompetent one at best.

The reason the ruling party can continue to stay in power is that despite lack of popularity there is nobody we can genuinely point to and say is a better alternative.

And why do we have this issue?

http://www.rferl.org/content/golbal-corruption-survey/25040514.html

"The only country surveyed in which less than half of respondents said they would be prepared to do anything was Armenia. Less than one-third of people in the Caucasian state said they would even be willing to sign a petition, in stark contrast to countries like Kosovo, where more than 90 percent of people said they would.

The most common reason given by the Armenian public was the belief that taking action is futile."

Because we have population that has given up, because we have this mentality of why even bother. In a country very democratic and free by ex-soviet standards, you would think we would at least have more hope than Belarus, Azerbaijan, the many-istans

but no, we have people in Armenia thinking this is how it's always been, this how it always will be, why stay and fight, and we have people in the diaspora thinking, Armenia is this corrupt place, that we can donate to once a year, and we know for a fact, despite having any proof, that even that money gets stolen, and it's not a place that can ever compare to where i live now.

among the many disadvantages Armenia has, our mentality seems to be our biggest one

[gegev]

Re: Armenia's Tourism is booming.

And once again, off goes the self hating Armenian chorus
Armenian immigration issues have nothing to do with ensuring it doesn't become little Iran
and can you provide examples of Syrian Armenians who want to go back to Syria over staying in Armenia?
Because at this moment I can provide to you examples, with name, facebooks, etc, of multiple syrian armenians who have moved and happily settled in Armenia

I don't understand how you people expect the government of Armenia on a $2 billion budget to miraculously modernize Armenia's roads while not increasing fees, provide housing and jobs for 100,000 Syrian-Armenians, appease two major power blocks, while keeping up with a nation which has a military budget 10-15 times the size of its military budget.

How far do you think 2 billion dollars goes exactly?
to be exact that adds up to $20,000 per Syrian-Armenian

ya technically Armenian could fly over every last Syrian-Armenian, provide them housing and a job
except it would mean the rest of the population would have to find a way to make it through the next year without schools, hospitals, a military, or a government

I like your unbiased way of doing analysis, thanks. We don't like our leaders, but it doesn't mean that we must blame them in everything.

[Mher]

Re: Armenia's Tourism is booming.

heh. dont worry, nobody is flocking to live in Armenia, even Syrian Armenians want to go back to war-destroyed syria once the war is ended, tells you alot doesn't it?

And once again, off goes the self hating Armenian chorus
Armenian immigration issues have nothing to do with ensuring it doesn't become little Iran
and can you provide examples of Syrian Armenians who want to go back to Syria over staying in Armenia?
Because at this moment I can provide to you examples, with name, facebooks, etc, of multiple syrian armenians who have moved and happily settled in Armenia

I don't understand how you people expect the government of Armenia on a $2 billion budget to miraculously modernize Armenia's roads while not increasing fees, provide housing and jobs for 100,000 Syrian-Armenians, appease two major power blocks, while keeping up with a nation which has a military budget 10-15 times the size of its military budget.

How far do you think 2 billion dollars goes exactly?
to be exact that adds up to $20,000 per Syrian-Armenian

ya technically Armenian could fly over every last Syrian-Armenian, provide them housing and a job
except it would mean the rest of the population would have to find a way to make it through the next year without schools, hospitals, a military, or a government

[Mher]

Re: Armenia's Tourism is booming.

Agree, the potential is incredible and the future is bright. It doesn't always take the best infrastructure in the world to attract tourists, sometimes all that is need is just safety, stability, natural beauty and culture/ history worth exploring... Armenia surely has the latter 2 and hopefully will gurantee the first two in the future/ long term.

I've lived in Iran, EU, and US, and Armenia is easily the safest country I've ever been to. I don't think Armenia has any issues with safety or stability. Maybe someone else can provide exact stats, but in my personal experience of going to Armenia 4 times, twice on extended stays, and through everything I've heard through repat friends, it is much safer than most parts of the world.

Armenia simply needs time to adapt and improve it's tourism industry, and with time, it will surely do that.

[ardzif]

Re: Armenia's Tourism is booming.

Armenia has a lot of potential in tourism that will slowly develop, we just need to give it time, the government can only do so much at a time.

Sevan has incredible potential, as does Ejmiatsin.

Transportation also has to change and become more standardized, though its improved a lot of the past several years

It's gonna take time, but the future is bright

Agree, the potential is incredible and the future is bright. It doesn't always take the best infrastructure in the world to attract tourists, sometimes all that is need is just safety, stability, natural beauty and culture/ history worth exploring... Armenia surely has the latter 2 and hopefully will gurantee the first two in the future/ long term.

[arakeretzig]

Re: Armenia's Tourism is booming.

the government needs to find a way though to strictly prevent foreigners staying permanently. One of our few strengths against Azerbaijan is that we have no minorities to be exploited, like Georgia and Azerbaijan. It's great to encourage Iranians to come and spend their money, as long as they go right back to their God forsaken islamic government when theyre done.

heh. dont worry, nobody is flocking to live in Armenia, even Syrian Armenians want to go back to war-destroyed syria once the war is ended, tells you alot doesn't it?

[Mher]

Re: Armenia's Tourism is booming.

I was reading this article and apparently Armenia receieved around 843 K visitors in 2012. ourism in Armenia is consistently growing. In 2011 Armenia received 758 K touristic visits and 684 K in 2010.

Armenia currently receives visitors amounting to around 30% of its' population. The services sector in Armenia (includes tourism) amounts to 42% for its GDP. The increase of visitors will consistently support Armenia's Economy and help reduce unemployment and fuel other economical sector. Armenia's GDP growth averaged 7.36% in the last 10 years, and had a quick rebound after the economic crisis with 7.2 % growth in 2012.

I know Armenia's Economy is not perfect, I know there is unemployment and high migration rate for its talented people to find people abroad, but I love to see even the smallest indicator of an improvement in Armenia's Economy. Good to see Armenia Rising

Armenia has a lot of potential in tourism that will slowly develop, we just need to give it time, the government can only do so much at a time.

Sevan has incredible potential, as does Ejmiatsin.

Transportation also has to change and become more standardized, though its improved a lot of the past several years

It's gonna take time, but the future is bright

the government needs to find a way though to strictly prevent foreigners staying permanently. One of our few strengths against Azerbaijan is that we have no minorities to be exploited, like Georgia and Azerbaijan. It's great to encourage Iranians to come and spend their money, as long as they go right back to their God forsaken islamic government when theyre done.

[Mher]

Re: Armenia's Tourism is booming.

I'd say that hard claims about tourist numbers are fake because there are no actual hard figures to base the claims on. Armenia counts just about anyone entering the country as a "tourist", and mostly does not distinguish between those coming for short-term business reasons, or visiting family or relatives, or those making brief trips from Georgia. I wonder why the word "tourists" is being used in those articles, rather than just "visitors"? Are there separate figures for foreign "visitor" numbers? 843,000 seems a high figure for "tourists"- there are not enough hotel beds in the whole country to cater for that amount of visitors! Other countries use more accurate data, such as bed occupancy rate, or length of stay, or visitor numbers to sites, or average spend per visitor per day. Unless such statistics are available for Armenia there is not the data to make claims about the scale of tourism or whether it is growing or not or how it is contributing to the economy. But most of the big hotels are mafia owned - they will be reluctant to give out any data on occupancy and prices paid.

lol the day you have something positive to say about anything is a day I want to see

[ardzif]

Re: Armenia's Tourism is booming.

I wonder why the word "tourists" is being used in those articles, rather than just "visitors"? Are there separate figures for foreign "visitor" numbers? 843,000 seems a high figure for "tourists"- there are not enough hotel beds in the whole country to cater for that amount of visitors!

While I agree with you, there are probably no accurate statistics for the "purely touristic" visits to Armenia. the numbers above are visitors per year, and are probably uniformly distributed along the months of the years (with higher numbers in high season), so even if the hotels don't have the capacity to accomodate 843k visitors the, it probably could accommodate 100k or 200k, don't you think?

As to the data source, the data is from the world bank: International tourism, number of arrivals - by country . According to the worldbank:

International inbound tourists (overnight visitors) are the number of tourists who travel to a country other than that in which they have their usual residence, but outside their usual environment, for a period not exceeding 12 months and whose main purpose in visiting is other than an activity remunerated from within the country visited. When data on number of tourists are not available, the number of visitors, which includes tourists, same-day visitors, cruise passengers, and crew members, is shown instead. Sources and collection methods for arrivals differ across countries. In some cases data are from border statistics (police, immigration, and the like) and supplemented by border surveys. In other cases data are from tourism accommodation establishments. For some countries number of arrivals is limited to arrivals by air and for others to arrivals staying in hotels. Some countries include arrivals of nationals residing abroad while others do not. Caution should thus be used in comparing arrivals across countries. The data on inbound tourists refer to the number of arrivals, not to the number of people traveling. Thus a person who makes several trips to a country during a given period is counted each time as a new arrival.

which probably means, you are right, these include business visits...etc..

nonetheless, I still believe an increased number of visitors is probably a healthy sign for Armenia's Economy