Batumi Boom Town
GEORGIA 2024
The city appeared in fragments. By the time we turned toward Georgia’s second-largest city, darkness had already fallen. Along the roadside, illuminated billboards advertised futuristic high-rise apartments. As the hillside dropped away and the asphalt wound through the outskirts, the outlines of cranes and half-lit towers came into view. At first, we couldn’t quite make sense of it – until then, Georgian cities had meant minimally maintained commie-block towns with chaotic streets.
Then the coastline opened up ahead, and the main city rose from the water’s edge. It was immediately clear why people call Batumi the Las Vegas of the Black Sea. The city sparkled with brightly lit, extravagantly designed high-rises – a colourful, blinking spectacle.
1 The Night of Arrival
Dating back some 2,800 years, Batumi began as a port city founded by the Greeks. Positioned along the ancient Silk Road, it served early on as a maritime link between distant supply. Over two millennia, the city maintained its strategic role as a bridge between East and West, shaped by shifting empires, and evolving trade networks, and resource extraction.
During the Soviet era, Batumi was reconfigured as one of the USSR’s southernmost seaside resorts. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city became part of the autonomous region of Adjara and entered a period of relative isolation. Only after its reintegration into Georgia in 2004 did Batumi embark on a new course again, transforming into a regional centre for gambling, tourism, and leisure.
2 Checking out the areas close by
In the early 2000s, Batumi attracted a handful of Kazakh investors who began building new seaside hotels and casinos. Since then, the city gradually earned a reputation as the “Las Vegas of the Black Sea” and has become a popular destination for gamblers from Turkey, Iran, and other Muslim-majority and Middle Eastern countries, where gambling is heavily restricted.
In recent years, the scale of real estate development has been unprecedented. Batumi’s coastline has been transformed into a dense skyline of high-rise hotels and apartment towers, driving what is now Georgia’s fastest-growing property market. Old neighbourhoods have been demolished and replaced with disneyfied simulacra of urban life. Yet despite the striking volume of new construction, most buildings remain vacant – giving space to the speculative vision of private investors rather than lived urban realities. The expected mass influx of tourists has failed to materialise, even during peak seasons (a situation exacerbated, though not caused, by COVID-19). Meanwhile, the city has absorbed a different kind of mobility: Russians and Ukrainians fleeing military conscription have settled in Batumi, reshaping its demographic and geopolitical position.
With our second accommodation, we wanted to get a better picture of the city’s real estate boom. We booked a night in one of Batumi’s many “apart-hotels.” Someone renting out an apartment in the Batumi Beach Tower offered us a good deal: one night for 28 Georgian lari (10 euros). At the reception desk, we received our keys and boarded the elevator to the 21st floor.
3 Moving to a Boom Town Apartment (28GEL/10€ per night special discount)
Inside our room, everything was tidy and clean. The highlight: a soft bed that felt like heaven compared to what we’d been sleeping on the past few days. The downsides: a suspiciously shaky balcony railing and a questionable amount of algae in the shower.
Even while resting, the ding of the elevators arriving in the corridor echoed through the thin door. It was clear the building wasn’t fully utilized. The ground floor, for example, looked complete, but a wall behind the lobby hid half the space, sealing off a row of perfectly empty rooms. Every floor above the 24th was completely vacant as well. Press the “Roof” button by accident ( ;-) ), and the elevator would ascend to a stop exposed to the open sky, with only a flimsy grid door separating you from a sheer drop. Needless to say, the advertised rooftop garden was nowhere to be found.
4 INVEST NOW!
After our first few days, we were still overwhelmed by the sheer scale of Batumi’s construction activities, the demolishment and the new buildings. Billboards loomed over every street, promising taller towers and glossier lifestyles – promises we regarded with suspicion.
5 Skyscraper Adventure
During our second day immersed in this surreal dreamscape, the urge to ascend one of the supertall towers became difficult to resist. We set our sights on the most intriguing of them all: The Black Sea Pearl Tower rising directly between the beach and the New Boulevard. It quickly became clear that the building was, in fact, a ghost tower, too: an abandoned or partially stalled construction site.
Besides accomplishing our self-set goal of ascending the most fashionable skyscraper in town, I want to share some other noteworthy observations we made in Batumi.
1. CCTV
Firstly, the whole city is full of CCTV, both in public on every street corner and in private areas there was a camera mounted on a pole or to the wall. And, before you ask, yes, the cameras were working and yes, they are also being monitored. (We made some tests!)
2. The city has its own Central Park
It is called Parki 6 Maisi. Alongside tree-lined paths and neatly trimmed lawns, it features the 5.5-hectare Nurigeli Lake, said to be of natural origin.
3. Neon City
Thirdly, high-rise buildings and neon signs have a longstanding tradition in Batumi - one that predates its current construction boom.
4. Digital Government
Fourth, as we initially intended only to pay our parking fees, we discovered that these same Paybox Machines are also used for gambling. We ended up losing all our money on Crystalbet. (just kidding.) The machines are indispensable if you need to pay government fines—which, incidentally, was exactly what we had to do because Georgia’s traffic rules seemed quite obscure, and its fully surveilled highway system catches everything.
5. Police Patrol
Fifth, even compared to other Georgian cities, there seemed to be significantly more police cars patrolling in Batumi. This felt quite strange, as there wasn’t much happening on the streets, and we were very sure, that we were the only real foreigners in the entire city anyway.
