Ginosi.com has set out to support the initative campaign of Magical World, a project that represents a video adaptation of an epic fairytale originally written by Armenian writer Ghazaros Aghayan. According to the project creators, the retelling of this fairytale incorporates social and economic factors that affect modern Armenia, things that we believe are important for the social and cultural recognition of the small nation.

Considering the fact that there is a vast insufficiency of digital interpretations of Armenian literary works and how great is the role of digital media in forming different views on life, Ginosi believes that this can greatly contribute to preserving of the Armenian national identity both in the inside and outside circles. Besides, it will potentially affect the spread of Armenian culture throughout the world, also somewhat contribute to tourism in Armenia.

August is the busiest tourist season in Armenia and Georgia. Prices go up and apartments and hotel rooms become scarce. Customers that can afford a little bit of flexibility in their travel plans can get better deals and save money. By planning their vacation for the months of October, November and December instead of August they will also help some of the 181.000 Armenian children with a developmental or physical handicap.

The Healthy Childhood program is simple. For every reservation made on Ginosi.com between now and September 30th for a stay during October, November or December 2012, ginosi.com will directly contribute 400 Armenian drams to the ECHO Charitable Foundation for handicapped and vulnerable children. 

Ginosi.com hopes that this project will resonate within the travel community. With the goal of making a significant difference, we strive to meet the challenge of providing better access to heathcare, education and provision of basic needs. 

Ginosi.com has temporarily suspended its cooperation with Harsnaqar hotel (located near Lake Sevan, in Armenia) following the pending investigation of the recent brutal beating by security staff which lead to a death at the Harsnaqar Restaurant.

As a socially responsible company, we have decided to temporarily suspend Harsnaqar's listing from ginosi.com until an investigation clarifies as to what exactly has transpired at the Harsnaqar Restaurant on the evening of June 17th, the incident which led to the death of Vahe Avetyan.

We do not expect this to disrupt business continuity as ginosi.com customers can choose from a number of alternative hotels that can be booked near Lake Sevan during this busy summer period. 

Ginosi.com is the largest Online Travel Agency in the Caucasus region offering a choice of accommodations in Armenia and Georgia.

With the goal of improving online booking in Armenia and Georgia and making it more reliable, ginosi.com has set out to strengthen the bond with its local suppliers of accommodations listed on the website and its network. In order to be able to keep track of quality, ginosi.com has classified the properties into four  ‘color’ categories. The colors are Red, Orange, Gray and Black, which classify the product quality from best to worst respectively.

While the “Red List” represents products with continuous updates of information, satisfying service and most importantly good overall customer experience, the “Orange List“ includes products that have the potential of becoming “Red”, but are not quite there yet. The products that fall behind in terms of information accuracy, incompetitive pricing and provided service, are dumped into the “Gray List”. Measures are usually taken by ginosi.com to help improve the competitiveness of these products.

A product is likely to fall in the “Black List” when the property management overbooks leaving the guests without accommodation, tries to cheat ginosi's customers or when there are issues related with hygiene. Black listed properties are removed permanently from the ginosi.com network. ginosi.com believes that by rewarding properties that are committed to honest business practices and excellent customer service, the company can help to establishing an overall higher quality of travel experience for visitors to Armenia and Georgia.

In 2011 Yerevan hotels and other types of tourist accommodations were brought online on a massive scale for the first time by ginosi.com. Shortly after Ginosi launched its website on December 31, 2010 other online booking companies followed suit. Ginosi had set out to promote tourism not just in Yerevan but also in Tbilisi and the smaller towns and villages of Armenia and Georgia. Right from the start Ginosi has operated by principles of corporate social responsibility and prioritizing contribution to the local economies particularly with respect to job creation for young people with great potential. By presenting Armenia and Georgia as a travel product export, something much needed for both countries, ginosi.com put the Caucasus on the list of travel destinations of tourists from around the world.

Through a number of improvements and developments on ginosi.com in 2011, now the site features a complete online booking system in 7 languages, thorough descriptions of the Caucasian travel destinations, inspirational videos and points of interest, recently established and very informative travel blog, a partner management network and so on. In its first year of operation Ginosi has stayed vigilant about social issues in the Caucasus and around the world. Thus the company made a donation to the victims of Japan’s devastating earthquake only a few months after its launch and while still operating with a total net loss, has dropped biased local media channels from its list of marketing suppliers, and has introduced specific anti-discrimination language in its employment terms.

To celebrate its one year anniversary with the start of 2012 ginosi.com recently announced the "Yerevan 101 Contest" with the theme of Yerevan streets and businesses. Ginosi.com is giving away a trip for two to Tbilisi for those who know Yerevan a little too well.” The challenge is to guess Yerevan street and venue names looking at original Yerevan pictures provided on Ginosi’s Facebook page and commenting your guess under each picture.

The online contest began on January 10, 2012 and is open for everyone willing to play detective and experience the full excitement of showing off their knowledge of Yerevan and getting to go to Tbilisi as a reward. The contestants have till February 10th to compete. The winner will be announced on February 15, 2012 and will get to travel to Tbilisi sometime between March and October 2012.

"We and our users post a lot of text, photo and video material on our Facebook page about travel in Armenia and Georgia and sometimes we get heated debates about places and neighborhoods and their whereabouts so we thought to offer this contest for all those users who think they know Yerevan really well. We want to offer them an opportunity to visit Tbilisi and get to know a new place. We expect the winner to be a young person without many opportunities to travel otherwise, but everyone has an equal opportunity to compete and win, as long as they play by the rules as explained on Ginosi’s Facebook page” says the US-based president of the company, Jivan Ginosian.

Some fanatic players collected more than twice the needed number of points to win within minutes of launch of the contest but new contestants still have good chances of getting ahead of those enthusiasts and winning the grand prize. ginosi.com will continue to post regular updates about the top three winning contestants until the contest closes on February 10.

In his closing statement about the developments in the coming year, Jivan Ginosian noted that Ginosi expects 2012 to be a year of active tourism in the Caucasus with a new record for the number of visitors to the region as well as a new record in the number of new players in the online market place for tourism in the region. This is great for the industry and is bound to improve quality and prices for the consumer, it’s an all around win-win situation. When asked if he is concerned at all about some of the strong competitors also having entered the Caucuses online travel market in 2011, Mr. Ginosian said "No, if we are excellent the customers will choose us, no matter what. If we are not excellent then we do not deserve to be chosen. It’s as simple as that...

Dear Radio Van Management,

ginosi.com is the first complete online accommodation booking agency for Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. Launched on December 30 2010, the site offers a wide range of hotels, apartments, houses and cottages for rent all over Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. The website itself and the properties listed on the site are specifically tailored to tourists from western countries. Besides allowing instant online booking the site offers a great deal of resources on various points of interest in Armenia in six languages. Many accommodations have detailed description of the surrounding area, maps and images. It is the first time in history that such an extensive website has been launched with a particular focus on Armenia as the ever growing Armenian tourism industry is capturing the interest of foreign and expatriate visitors and investors alike. 

ginosi.com is a post web 2.0 company that takes the Internet and web based technologies for granted and focuses on the best user experience. With a permanent international team based in Europe, the US and Armenia, a distributed network of web-developers, local freelance writers, account managers and reservations agents, ginosi.com offers a world class web product to travelers with a constant growth and improvement of both content and features.

When asked in an interview about how the idea of launching ginosi.com came about, the president of the company, Jivan Ginosian who is based in Glendale, California said: “I am myself from Armenia, and I often thought it was a shame that with the technological possibilities of today, each time I decide to visit my homeland I am faced with the problem of how to secure a place to stay and how to get accurate information about it. So we decided to launch a website that offers complete practical and educational information about Armenia, with the possibility to secure an accommodation with instant confirmation, without any booking fees. For me this was a dream come true and I knew that there are many others out there who like me, would greatly appreciate such a resource” .

When asked about plans to expand beyond Armenia, Mr. Ginosian answered: 

“Our focus right now is very much Armenia. Our mission is to present Armenia and promote it to the frequent western traveler. For this reason we have many hotels,  features and policies that western travelers expect and trust, like integrated secure booking, lowest price guarantee, no booking fees, as well as a multi-lingual interface." 

What we offer the Armenian diaspora, on the other hand, is the entire site in Armenian and since most Armenians are interested in returning "home" and that usually does not mean hotels, we also list many apartments, houses and cottages in our inventory which we expand daily. All this is free of charge and without any booking fees. We work as the marketing arm of all the properties that we list. Our aim is to promote Armenia and make traveling to Armenia easier in markets where Armenia is still largely an undiscovered treasure. As for expansion beyond Armenia, I cannot say with any certainty what the future holds but we are considering the synergies of working with Armenia’s neighbors and the value we could offer to travelers providing them a one-stop-shop for a visit to not just Armenia but the entire region”.

www.ginosi.com has launched a charity program for the victims of the recent Japan tsunami disaster which has affected the lives of thousands of people. 

In a press release ginosi.com stated that the company chose to donate $5 of their own revenue for every booking received between now and April 24th to the Heart to Heart International Japan Disaster Relief Fund. “Although many people refer to ginosi.com as The Armenia Booking website, we are a global company operating in the travel business and when disaster struck in Japan, we had no doubt in our minds that we needed to act on it” said Jivan Ginosian, the California based President of ginosi.com.  “Throughout Armenia’s history, we have seen our share of pain and suffering and the helping hand of kind people from far away lands has often been the only beacon of hope in dire times. We know this too well and it is not by accident that the last day of our fund raiser is chosen to be April 24th. While we know we cannot turn time back and return the disrupted lives of the victims, we hope that our fund raising efforts will offer the affected survivors some comfort and small help in putting their shattered lives back together” said Mr. Ginosian.

Ginosi.com, the largest online booking company for hotels and apartments in Armenia is expanding its operations into neighboring Georgia. The company officially announced today that it has added Georgia, as a travel destination.

“We are happy to announce that Ginosi.com is expanding its services and its list of destinations. We are convinced that Georgia will be received by the traveler very enthusiastically and we hope we will soon be able to offer accommodations to the online traveler in the entire Caucasus region. Tens of thousands of Armenians travel to Georgia each year and by adding Georgia in our travel destinations we aim to make travel planning to Georgia even easier for Armenians as well as foreign travelers. Our customers can visit www.ginosi.com, choose an apartment or hotel, view photos, videos, maps and detailed descriptions in their native language, no need to speak Georgian”  says Jivan Ginosian with a smile “and just book their accommodation instantly online.” 

Most of us have felt the pain and difficulty of organizing a trip to Georgia. It usually takes lots of time and nerves.  We need to call our friends for advice, visit travel agencies, search on the Internet for Georgian hotels or apartments to get some information. And even after that in many cases we feel deceived after having arrived in Georgia, as we often don’t get what we were expecting. 

With Ginosi.com this process is much easier. The website provides detailed and trustworthy descriptions of each property and Ginosi.com negotiates the lowest rates for any particular property on behalf of the customer, using seasoned local agents in Georgia. It’s a one-stop-shop for arranging a vacation to Georgia, where your trip can be planned in a matter of minutes with the ease and confidence of the latest modern technology. 

On the 17th of March, 2011 ginosi.com, the first and largest Armenian online booking agency, signed a cooperation agreement with Hertz, world renown company providing car renting services in  more than 8,100 rental locations in over 147 countries worldwide. 

According to the agreement, ginosi.com, which currently offers a wide range of hotels, apartments, cottages and houses for rent all over Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, is going to enlarge its network of services offering not only accommodations but also car rentals to its customers.

The partnership of these two globally known companies is promising. This cooperation significantly enlarges the portfolio of ginosi.com. No other company offers such extensive services for the tourists coming to Armenia. This will help ginosi.com customers save valuable time and will enable them to get a full travel package only in matter of minutes. 

In the interview with Jivan Ginosian, president of ginosi.com, Mr. Ginosian said: “We chose Hertz, because it is a reliable partner and a well known world brand. Besides, Hertz has two convenient locations in Yerevan, one in the city and one at the airport. Above all this, Hertz agreed to give our customers a flat 10% discount across their entire product line. They also agreed that the price listed with us will be the lowest anywhere, which is in line with our lowest price guarantee commitment to our customers.”

The heads of the two companies are convinced that a new success story lies ahead of them and the tourism industry of Armenia.