Tourists flock to Georgia this summer

Georgia is fast becoming a tourist destination by guests from all over the globe with latest figures revealing more than 2.9 million visitors spent time in Georgia this year.

The country’s inviting summer weather was a draw-card for many guests and visitor numbers continued to increase as the summer season progressed.

Latest data revealed about 2,000 more tourists came to Georgia in July than the previous month.

Figures from the Ministry of Internal Affairs Informative-Analytical Department stated Georgia hosted 670,256 visitors in July 2014. This total was nine percent higher than in July 2013.

Meanwhile 2,913,618 visitors spent time in the country in the first seven months of this year – a four percent increase on the same time in 2013.

More than a third of people who came to Georgia were tourists – 1,191,815, which was 41 percent of the total guest rate. This was 11 percent higher than the same time last year.

Of the total guests, 19 percent of people who came to Georgia were in transit – 552,556 – which was a four percent drop on 2013, and 1,169,247 people came to Georgia for "other” reasons, which was 40 percent of the total amount of visitors and a 0.7 percent decrease on 2013 figures.

Total figures for 2014 revealed the highest number of visitors came from Turkey (three percent decrease compared to 2013), Azerbaijan (35 percent increase), Armenia (2 percent decrease), Russia (13.3 percent increase) and Ukraine (33 percent increase).

In addition, a positive trend continued as more visitors from European Union (EU) member states travelled to Georgia. Visitors from Lithuania in 2014 increased by 88 percent, Poland by 47 percent, Austria by 17 percent, Italy by 13 percent and Latvia by 17 percent.

When discussing visitors from Asia, most visitors came from Kazakhstan (39 percent increase on 2013), while the largest number of guests from an Eastern European country were from Belarus, which saw a 57 percent increase on the same time last year.