Fewer travellers, more Europeans: Georgia's first half in tourism

Between January and June 2026 Georgia recorded 2,272,964 international tourist visits and 3,050,173 total international traveller visits. Tourist visits were essentially flat year on year, while total traveller visits fell 3.3%. Revenue came to about USD 1.9 billion, down 2%. The second quarter carried most of the softness, with traveller visits down 4.9% and revenue down 3.8% to roughly USD 1.1 billion.

The EU and UK together produced 249,201 visits in the period, up 23.4%, and USD 335.7 million in spending, up 21.2%. Visits from China rose 16.7% to 54,554 and Central Asian visits rose 3.1% to 115,416. The government attributed the overall decline to reduced flows from countries affected by regional conflicts and related air travel restrictions, and credited marketing and route diversification with partly offsetting it.

A shift towards European and Chinese guests changes practical things: booking lead times, expectations about written confirmations and refunds, language on a listing, and which platforms the enquiries come through. Operators who still write only for the markets that dominated three years ago are advertising to a shrinking share of arrivals. Checking where your own last hundred bookings came from is a cheap way to see whether your mix has already moved.