Tour providers must now be on the register, and high-risk services carry fines up to 6,000 lari

The amendment was adopted on 28 May 2026 and came into force three days later. Its core requirement is simple: a business supplying tourism services has to appear in the tourism service provider registry. That covers the obvious operators, and it also reaches the smaller end of the market — the household running two guest rooms and a vineyard tour, the driver who sells a day in Kakheti, the person who takes groups up a canyon at weekends. If your income from visitors is a business rather than a favour, the register is where the state expects to find your name.

The penalty range written into the law — 500 to 6,000 lari — applies to supplying high-risk tourism services unlawfully. What counts as high-risk is left to the government to define, which means the list is the document to watch rather than the law itself. For anyone selling rafting, paragliding, canyoning, ski guiding, horse trekking or high-altitude hiking, the prudent assumption until the list is published is that you are on it.

Alongside the list of high-risk services, the government is to decide which providers must carry professional or civil liability insurance. That is the provision with real cost attached. A host selling a guided experience should price a policy in now rather than discover the requirement in the middle of next season, and should check whether an existing household or business policy excludes paid activity with guests. Where you work with a partner operator, it is worth establishing in writing which of you carries the cover.

Registration itself is not new. Amendments passed in December 2024 already required tour operators, agents and guides to be on the national register, and reporting from January 2025 described fines for unregistered guides as postponed while the administration talked to the sector. The 2026 change is what turns a stated requirement into an enforced one with a published penalty range. Operators who treated the earlier rule as aspirational should read the new text as the end of that interpretation.