Tourism is booming: visitor trips (tourist trips and same-day trips combined) were up 16.4% y/y to 3.0mn in 1H18. Tourist trips drove the growth, reaching 1.9mn visitors and accounting for 64.5% of the total in 1H18. This comfortably translates into our total tourist trip forecast for 2018 of 4.9mn. Leisure and recreation is the predominant purpose of visits to Georgia, and visitors enjoy Georgian cuisine the most. With Georgia’s regions attracting a growing number of visitors and the regional accommodation market undersupplied, the timing for the hotel development in Georgia’s regions looks right.
Tourist trips drove growth, accounting for 64.5% of total in 1H18. Tourist trips rose 22.9% y/y to 1.9mn in 1H18, which we expect to comfortably translate into our total tourist trip forecast for 2018 of 4.9mn.
We expect tourist trips to reach nearly 9mn by 2022. We have revised our forecast upwards and now expect 8.8mn tourist trips in 2022 (up from 7.6mn previously), or 2.4x the country’s population based on a new methodology (see Table 1 and Box 1 for clarification). This increase will see Georgia overtake Hungary (1.6x), Slovenia (1.5x), Albania (1.4x) and Bulgaria (1.2x) according to their 2016 ratios. However, this would still be below the proportions found in Croatia (3.3x), Cyprus (2.7x) and Montenegro (2.7x) in 2016.
