Rent a car in Georgia

Our Georgia car rental services cover the country’s three international gateways — Tbilisi, Batumi and Kutaisi — along with locations in the capital and the Black Sea coast. Georgia is compact enough to cross in a day and varied enough to fill a fortnight, which makes it near-perfect self-drive territory.

For travellers from the UAE it has become one of the most popular summer escapes: a flight of around three hours, mountain air in place of Gulf humidity, and a landscape that changes completely every ninety minutes on the road.

Planning a loop rather than a base? Flexible return options mean you can fly into Tbilisi, drive west through the mountains and hand the car back in Batumi.

YOUR TOP RENTAL LOCATIONS IN GEORGIA

Tbilisi International Airport · Tbilisi · Batumi Airport · Batumi · Kutaisi Airport · Kutaisi · Gudauri · Telavi · Sighnaghi · Borjomi · Mtskheta · Rustavi · Zugdidi · Poti · Stepantsminda (Kazbegi) · Mestia

Georgia sits where Europe and Asia argue about the border, and it has spent three thousand years absorbing both. It claims the world’s oldest winemaking tradition, an alphabet used nowhere else, and a landscape that runs from subtropical coast to five-thousand-metre peaks inside a country smaller than the UAE.

Tbilisi is the obvious starting point. The Old Town falls down a hillside in wooden balconies and crooked lanes, with the brick domes of the Abanotubani sulphur baths at the bottom and the Narikala Fortress above. Cross the glass Bridge of Peace into the newer city and Rustaveli Avenue takes over — opera house, museums, and a cafe culture that runs late. Twenty minutes out sits Mtskheta, the ancient capital, where Svetitskhoveli Cathedral and the hilltop Jvari Monastery are both UNESCO-listed.

North of the capital the Georgian Military Highway is the drive everyone comes for. It climbs past the reservoir fortress of Ananuri, through the ski slopes of Gudauri and over the Jvari Pass at more than two thousand metres, ending at Stepantsminda beneath Mount Kazbek. The Gergeti Trinity Church, alone on its ridge with a five-thousand-metre peak behind it, is the image of Georgia — and the road up to it is steep enough to need a capable vehicle.

East lies Kakheti, where wine has been made in buried clay qvevri for eight thousand years. Base yourself in the walled hilltop town of Sighnaghi, looking out over the Alazani valley to the Caucasus, and work through the cellar doors around Telavi and Kvareli. The Bodbe and Alaverdi monasteries are on the same route.

Head west instead and the country changes again: the cave city of Uplistsikhe carved into rock near Gori, the mineral-water spa town of Borjomi with its forested national park, and the UNESCO-listed Gelati Monastery near Kutaisi. Push north from there into Svaneti, where the medieval stone defence towers of Mestia and Ushguli stand beneath permanent snow — remote, spectacular, and demanding of both driver and vehicle. Finally the road reaches Batumi on the Black Sea, a subtropical resort city of botanical gardens, casinos and a moving steel sculpture on the promenade.

Main routes are in good condition, but mountain roads are narrow, steep and shared with livestock, and passes including Jvari can close in winter. May to October is the ideal window, with July and August the peak for Gulf travellers.