Galt&Taggart has increased the forecast of a growing number of tourists in Georgia. Namely, in 2022 G&T expects 8.8 mln tourists in the country instead of 7.6 of the previous forecast. With this forecast, in 2022 Georgia will be visited by 2.4 times more tourists than the population of the country. As a result, Georgia will outstrip countries like Hungary and Bulgaria which are visited in average by 1.6 and 1.2 (respectively) times more tourists than their populations. However, Georgia’s forecast still lags behind Croatia and Cyprus which are annually visited by 3.3 and 2.7 times more tourists that their populations. By G&T forecast, in 2018, Georgia will be visited by 1.3 times more tourists than its population. Last year the number of tourists who visited Georgia was 1.1 times the population.
The increased forecast of Galt&Taggart is connected to changing of the methodology by the National Administration of Tourism which was brought closer to UNWITO standards. Besides, the forecast also takes the account of GeoStat research data.
In January-July, Georgia generated 1.7 bln USD income from tourism. The biggest income – 431 mln USD – was registered in July, which is 13.7% more than in the same period last year. The biggest growth of the tourism generated income – 28.9% – was registered in March.
Based on January-July data, Georgia was visited by 4,600,988 international travelers. The increase compared to the same period of last year makes +12.9%. The number of international visits was 3,843,036 (+15.1%). The number of tourist visits was 2,498,751, which is 433,624 more than the rate of January-July 2017 (+21%). The biggest number of international visits were from Azerbaijan (+10.4%), Russia (24.1%), Turkey (+20.4%) and Armenia (+2.1%).
