Georgia’s tourism and wine industries see huge growth

The Georgian National Tourism Administration has announced that more than 3,862,000 tourists visited the country between January and June, an 8.4 per cent increase compared to the same period of 2018. Tourism revenues between January and May increased by 101 million US dollars (close to 9.2 per cent in year-on-year).

In June alone, close to 472,000 tourists and 874,000 international travellers visited the country, respectively an 18 per cent and 20.2 per cent rise on June 2018.

In June, the highest number of visitors came from Turkey (45.8 per cent), Russia (30.8 per cent), Armenia (9.7 per cent) and Azerbaijan (8.8 per cent), while the highest increases in visitor numbers were from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Austria, Germany, China, South Korea, Turkey and the UK.

In 2018, Georgia recorded a record number of close to 8,680,000 international arrivals, of whom 4,757,000 were tourists, a 16.9 per cent increase compared to 2017.

Meantime, the Georgian National Wine Agency has announced that wine exports from the country grew by six per cent in January-June when compared to the same period of last year. More than 40.5 million bottles of Georgian wine were sold worldwide. The Georgian wine industry’s profits totalled in more than 98 million US dollars in January to June, a nine per cent rise compared to 2018.

Russia remains the largest importer of Georgina wine (63.1 per cent), followed by Ukraine, China, Poland and Kazakhstan.

The promising data comes after Russia announced that it will introduce a ban on flights to Georgia from July 8 following protests in Tbilisi against Russia’s occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Russian authorities were also flirting with the idea of banning Georgian wine imports, but have yet to do so.