BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 13
By Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
Total international visitor growth in Georgia increased by 8.8 percent in October 2019, year-on-year after subdued growth of 3.9 percent year-on-year from July through September, Trend reports via Georgian investment company Galt & Taggart.
Out of total 670,000 visitors, Georgia hosted 430,000 tourists (up by 7.8 percent year-on-year) and 220,000 same-day visitors (up by 10.9 percent year-on-year) in October.
Strengthened tourist arrivals (+7.8 percent year-on-year) in October was supported by significantly increased visitors from Israel (+56.9 percent year-on-year), Kazakhstan (139.4 percent year-on-year) and EU countries (+32.2 percent year-on-year).
Arrivals from neighboring countries (Azerbaijan and Turkey) also continued solid growth, reflected in statistics for same-day arrivals (+10.9 percent year-on-year).
Importantly, significantly reduced arrivals from bigger markets - Russia and Iran, were fully offset by strong arrival growth from other countries.
In 10 months of 2019, total international arrivals stood at 6.6 million people (up by 6.2 percent year-on-year).
In 10 months of 2019, tourism revenues reached $2.8 billion (up by 0.9 percent year-on-year) in Georgia.
Visitors from the EU increased by 25 percent year-on-year to over 441,000 people.
Galt & Taggart forecasts that 1 million tourists will visit Georgia in 4Q2019, bringing total tourist arrivals to 5 million persons (+5.2 percent year-on-year) in 2019.
"We forecast tourism revenues at $3.3 billion (+1.8 percent year-on-year) in 2019 versus our revised forecast of $3.4 billion," said the company.
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