Tourism and annual visits
Georgia set a record in 2025: close to 5.5 million tourists in a country of 3.7 million people.
More visitors a year than residents
How many actually come
Georgia counts arrivals two ways, and the two numbers sit far enough apart that published figures rarely agree. "International visits" counts everyone who crosses the border, including people passing through for a day; "tourists" counts only those who stay at least twenty-four hours. In 2025 the country recorded roughly 6.9 million of the first and about 5.5 million of the second — the highest tourist figure it has ever posted, and up 8.4 per cent on the year before.
Set that against a population of around 3.7 million and the scale is easier to feel: Georgia hosts comfortably more visitors in a year than it has residents. In 2024 international tourism earned the country roughly 4.4 billion dollars, about 7.3 per cent of GDP.
Where they come from
The neighbours dominate. In 2024 Russia accounted for around 1.25 million visits, Turkey for about 964,000, Armenia for 720,000 and Azerbaijan for 220,000, with Israel at roughly 294,000 — between them the bordering countries make up most of the total.
What has shifted recently is the European share. In 2025 arrivals from the United Kingdom rose by about 39 per cent, from Spain by 49, from Italy by 39 and from Greece by 28 — off a much smaller base in every case, but consistently enough that Georgia is no longer only a regional destination.
When they come, and where they go
The year has a sharp peak. July, August and September carry the heaviest traffic, and most of it lands on the coast: Adjara, the region Batumi sits in, drew about 2.54 million visitors in 2023, largely inside that window. Tbilisi's season is flatter and runs longer, because the city's draw is the old town, the baths and the food rather than the weather — which is the practical difference between the two markets described elsewhere on this site.
Away from the two cities the traffic follows a short list: Mtskheta and its UNESCO-listed monasteries half an hour from the capital, the wine roads of Kakheti to the east, the church at Gergeti under Mount Kazbek to the north, the tower villages of Svaneti in the northwest, and Gudauri, whose winter arrives just as the coast empties and gives the mountains a second season of their own.
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