KaZantip: Massive outdoor music festival begins

Tens of thousands of revelers are descending on western Georgia to attend the KaZantip Republic – Georgia’s largest outdoor music festival.

Starting from August 20, Georgia’s Black Sea resort Anaklia will be bustling with people who have come from all over Georgia and further afield to enjoy the 10-day festival, which boasts 300 DJs, multiple dance floors and more than 30 bars and restaurants.

The annual music festival has become one of the region’s main events since it was established in 1992 and in recent years, the event has hosted more than 100,000 guests per festival.

Previously KaZantip was held in Popovka village in Crimea, however, the recent occupation of Crimea by Russia saw festival creator Nikita Marshunok decide to move the event to Georgia.

The Georgian National Tourism Administration offered Marshunok several venues to host ‘KaZantip Republic’, including Georgia’s main coastal city Batumi, however, Marshunok said this venue was "too banal” and «discovering and developing new resorts” was more attractive to him.

"We can be the catalysts for economic growth of this area. It just requires determination of a certain format, which is not limited to just music,” he said of the festival venue Anaklia.

"From Anaklia we want to create a multicultural Mecca for the people who follow the latest trends. We want the place to be dominated by art, cinema, sports and everything that is the subject of interest of young people,” Marshunok said.

Event organizers expected more than 30,000 visitors to the festival this year, with 30 percent being locals. Tickets to the event, called visa, are free for Georgian and Ukrainian females.

To date, the official festival website has registered more than 18,000 Georgian and Ukrainian women, who earlier applied for a free visa ticket.

Throughout the festival guests can stay in various types of accommodation – from small guesthouses to larger hotels or even in a specifically established camping area named tent city, which costs less than $5 USD per day.

"We have a large tourism agency which has created a huge base of the housing sector. We held trainings, talked to landlords and prepared them to receive guests,” Marshunok said in an interview with Georgian Forbes magazine.

"There will be a tent city. We have also made agreements with several companies whose cruise liners will enter the waters of these territorial waters. In short, we are ready,” Marshunok said.

According to the KaZantip website, the "unique utopia has its own city of culture which celebrates life with parties around the clock as 300 DJs, big and small, play across six dance floors”.

"Boasting more than 30 bars and restaurants, revelers don't even have to leave if they don't feel they want to, instead they swing from hammocks, point for the lasers and fall in love with some of the most beautiful people in the world for a whole month,” read the event description on the KaZantip website.

Georgian artists are gearing up to perform in the festival, alongside international names like Dixon, Seth Troxler, Ricardo Villalobos, Jamie Jones, Art Department, Dubfire and more.

The ‘KaZantip Republic’ will be held from August 20-30 and is expected to bring a vast economical profit to the region and greater country. This will be the first time Anaklia has hosted such a large-scale event. (agenda.ge)