Tourist numbers are already close to the country’s population of 3.7mn. The total number of international visitors (tourists, transit and one-day arrivals combined) increased at a CAGR of 21.7% over 2008-17 and reached a record 7.5mn persons in 2017. With 3.5mn tourists in 2017, 2018 looks set to be another bumper year with tourist arrivals forecast to reach a new record of around 4.2mn – above Georgia’s local population. Accordin to G&T, Traditionally, visitors to Georgia have been more frequently from CIS countries and Turkey. However, the highly sought-after diversification of the arrival mix is evident, with the share of the top four source markets down from 88.1% in 2012 to 80.1% in 2017 as arrivals have increased significantly from the Middle East and Iran.
“Tourism is most flourishing part of Georgian economy, which was otherwise affected by regional economic turmoil in 2015-2016. Revenue from the tourism sector of US$ 2.8bn (18.1% of GDP) in 2017 helped to significantly reduce the country’s current account deficit, when it fell to single digits at 8.7% of GDP for the year. Importantly, Georgia has never seen a decline in its tourist revenues – even in 2009 and 2015, beating peers which experienced reduced tourism revenues in those years.
We estimate that tourist arrivals will more than double over the next five years to 7.6mn – 2.0x Georgia’s population. At this proportion, Georgia will overtake Hungary (1.6x), Slovenia (1.5x), Albania (1.4x) and Bulgaria’s (1.2x) ratios from 2016 but will still be below the proportions found in Croatia (3.3x), Cyprus (2.7x), Montenegro (2.7x) and Estonia (2.4x) in 2016. The findings for Georgia seem reasonable as in the other countries mentioned above, tourist numbers used to double every five to seven years. Additionally, we do not exclude faster growth in tourist arrivals in Georgia given the quick success of on-going reforms in the tourism sector“, - notes G&T.
