Visitors fell 5% last quarter, revenue fell 13% — the spend per visit is the number that hurts

Georgia recorded about 1.3 million international visitors between April and June 2026, down 5.2% on the same quarter of 2025. Tourism revenue came to 3.0 billion lari, down 13.3%. Average spending per visit was 1,922.1 lari, 9.2% lower than a year earlier. The revenue fall is therefore roughly twice the fall in arrivals, and the gap is accounted for almost entirely by each visitor spending less.

Food and drink took 27.3% of visitor spending, shopping 25.2% and accommodation 24.3%. Those three shares sitting so close together is itself informative: a bed is not the main thing a visitor buys here, and roughly three quarters of the money passes through restaurants, shops and everything else. For a host, that means the local economy around your flat is part of your product, and that a guest cutting their budget usually cuts the extras before they cut the nights.

The neighbours remain the market. Russia accounted for 328,900 visitors, or 25.1% of the total; Turkey 16.9%; Armenia 10.8%. Between them that is more than half of all arrivals from three countries, all of them reachable by road. Anyone building a business on long-haul European or Gulf demand should read that as a description of the current base rather than the future, and price accordingly.

A falling spend per visit usually means shorter stays, cheaper rooms chosen within the same property, and fewer paid extras — not people staying home. The responses that fit that are dull and effective: make the shoulder-season nights easy to book, price a five-night stay so it beats three, and put the free parts of the neighbourhood in front of guests so a tighter budget does not read as a worse holiday. Discounting the nightly rate is the last lever, not the first.