Georgia Sees Record Breaking Number of Tourists in July

“Tourism helps promote considerable growth for our country, and it’s not statistics and facts alone; incoming tourism is an important factor for export in our country, as it’s through tourism that the majority of international income flow comes to Georgia,” George Chogovadze, Head of the National Tourism Administration said at a press conference today, as he presented statistics on international visitors coming to the country, noting that for the period of January- July 2017, the increase in the number of international travellers showed a growth of 30.2%, compared to the same period in 2016. 

Following the information from the Georgian National Tourism Administration, considerable tourism growth is seen from Georgia’s neighbouring countries as well as from the EU, (an increase of 52% from Austria, 39% from Netherlands, 32% in number of tourists from Germany and 29% from the UK.) In addition, Persian Gulf countries and Jordan in particular showed a 400% increase in the number of tourists coming to Georgia, a 318% increase from Lebanon and 218% tourist flow increase from Saudi Arabia, according to GNTA. 

The month of July 2017 showed a 28.5% increase in total foreign visitors coming to Georgia, with the number of tourists hitting almost 1 million in the month of July alone; a milestone, which according to the Georgian National Tourism Administration has never happened before. As for the number of tourist staying 24 hours or more in the country, this shows an increase of 33%. 

“Tourism is one of the major sources of income for the private sector in Georgia, between the years 2015 to 2016, income growth from tourism amounted to 230 million USD,” George Chogovadze said. While for the first quarter of 2017, income growth from international tourism was an astonishing 82 million USD, according to Chogovadze. He added that transactions made through international credit and debit cards have increased by up to 33% in 2016-2017. 

As the head of the National Tourism Administration mentioned, tourism remains an important component of GDP, with a 12% increase of tourism shares in GDP in 2016. In the first quarter of 2017, the share of tourism in GDP increased by 0.8 %, totalling 6.8% of the total GDP in Georgia.

By Nino Gugunishvili