Visitors stayed longer and spent less per trip — and 81.8% had been before

Georgia received 1.3 million foreign visitors in the second quarter of 2026, 5.2% fewer than in the same quarter of 2025. Of those visits, 81.5% were tourists who stayed at least one night, 14.8% were same-day visitors and 3.8% were counted as both. The average stay rose from 5.30 nights to 5.48. A shorter arrivals list with longer stays is a different business from the reverse: it means fewer check-ins to fill the same bed-nights, which favours operators selling multi-night packages and penalises anyone whose model depends on turnover — day tours sold at the door, single-night stopovers, airport-adjacent rooms.

Total spending by foreign visitors was ₾3 billion in the quarter, about $1.11 billion, down 13.3% year on year. Spend per visit fell 9.2% to ₾1,922.1, about $711.9. Since visits fell 5.2% and spend per visit fell 9.2%, the per-visit decline is the larger part of the revenue drop — this is a spending story more than a footfall story. Where the money went: food and drinks 27.3%, shopping 25.2%, accommodation 24.3%. Those three take more than three quarters of the wallet, and accommodation is the smallest of them, which is worth sitting with if you own rooms rather than a restaurant or a shop.

The largest age band is 31 to 50 at 45.6%. Men made up 57.1% of visits and women 42.9%. Purpose of trip splits as holiday, leisure and recreation 49.6%, visiting friends and relatives 25.6%, and transit 12%. The quarter of visits that are visiting friends and relatives is the figure most often skipped in tourism planning: those visitors sleep in someone's home rather than a guesthouse, but they eat out, shop and take day trips, which points at experiences and restaurants rather than beds as the way to reach them. Transit at 12% is a separate audience again — people passing through on a route, reachable mainly by what sits near the road or the border.

Satisfaction came in at 93.1% combined, with 54.4% rating the trip very satisfying and 38.7% satisfying. More striking: 81.8% of visits were repeat visits. Four visitors in five had been to Georgia before. That changes what marketing is for. A market where most arrivals are returning is not won with first-impression material about khinkali and mountains; it is won on the things that make a second and third trip worth taking — a region they have not seen, a route in a different season, a reason to come in February rather than August. Tbilisi took 36.9% of all visits and Adjara 26.2%, which between them leave more than a third of visits spread across everywhere else, and that is where the repeat visitor is most likely to be looking.