Tbilisi and Batumi moved in opposite directions in the first quarter — and the reason is seasonality

Galt & Taggart's first-quarter 2026 report, as summarised by Kedaro News, puts Tbilisi hotel occupancy at 43% against 39% in the same quarter of 2025, with the average daily rate at 89 dollars against 83. Batumi went the other way on occupancy — 31% against 47% — while its average daily rate still rose, 81 dollars against 74. On the short-let side, Tbilisi recorded about 319,000 booked nights, up 24% year on year, at a rate close to flat near 41 dollars; Batumi recorded about 157,000 nights, up 7%, at 28 dollars against 31 a year earlier.

January to March is the wrong window for a Black Sea resort and a reasonable one for a capital. Tbilisi fills in winter on business travel, transit, city breaks and the ski traffic that routes through it; Batumi's demand is concentrated in summer, so a weak first quarter there says less about the year than the same number would in Tbilisi. The practical consequence for anyone comparing the two as investments is that a single quarter is not a comparison at all. Batumi has to be judged on a full twelve months, and on how much of the year a unit can realistically be let.

Batumi's hotels charged more per room while filling fewer of them, and that combination usually means one of two things: the mix of open hotels shifted toward higher-priced stock, or operators chose to hold rates rather than discount into a weak quarter. Neither is bad news on its own, but neither is growth either. For an owner weighing whether to put a flat into a hotel-style rental pool or a short-let platform, the comparison that matters is revenue per available night across the whole year, not the headline nightly rate — a high rate on an empty calendar earns nothing.