• International visitors (tourists and same-day combined) surged 19.9% y/y to 0.7mn persons in June-19 after 14.2% y/y growth in May-19. This growth was mostly driven by 18.0% y/y increase in tourist arrivals, while same-day arrivals also posted strong growth of 23.6% y/y. Turkey contributed most to total growth, as arrivals surged in June-19 (+45.8% y/y), after continued decline from Sep-18 to May-19. Turkish visitors were main reason of same-day arrival growth in June-19. Arrivals from Russia remained largest source market, growing 30.8% y/y – mostly reflected in tourist growth figures.
     
  • Visitors from the EU were up 29.3% y/y to nearly 52k visitors, with Germany (+67.7% y/y) and Poland (+17.4% y/y) driving growth. Visitors were also pronounced from Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan, while arrivals from Iran more than halved (down since Jun-18 with the exception of Nov-18).
     
  • Tourism generated US$ 379mn revenues in June-19 by our estimates, up 16.5% y/y bringing 1H19 revenues at US$ 1.5bn, up 11.4% y/y.
     
  • We revise our tourism 2019 growth projection taking into account temporary travel restrictions on flights from Russia to Georgia starting on 8 July 2019. We expect tourism revenues to be flat y/y in 2H19 at US$ 1.9bn as we estimate tourism revenue loss of US$ 200mn in 2019 from reduced Russian arrivals. Therefore, we revise tourism revenues forecast for the full 2019 year at US$ 3.4bn from our initial projection of US$ 3.6bn.


Please see the full note here, which brings together tourist arrival data for reporting month, most recent statistical information available in the sector and 2019 forecast.