Galt&Taggart Expects about 200 million USD Losses from Russian Flight Ban
‘This is a strike to tourism industry, but it is not irresolvable”, Kakha Samkurashvili, senior analyst for Galt&Taggart told BM.Ge regarding the National Tourism Administration’s statistics saying that in July 2019 the inflow of Russian tourists declined by 14.6% year on year and only 108 204 tourists arrived in Georgia from Russia, while the inflow of international visitors decreased by 6.4%.
At the same time, total tourist visits to Georgia in July rose by 1% year on year.
This year the country will lose about 200 million USD as a result of Russian flight ban. Samkurashvili said.
“According to our report, the month of July has recorded very positive indicators amid our expectations and Russian sanctions. We expected deeper crisis. About 6% slowdown was registered in terms of visitors’ inflow, while the inflow of tourists declined by about 15%... In whole we expect the country to lose about 200 million USD, maybe even lesser. Before sanctions we expected the sector to grow by 11.5%, but now the sector will grow by 3.5%-4%”, Samkurashvili said.
According to the Galt&Taggart forecasts, in 2019 Georgia will host 4.9 million tourists and revenues from tourism sector will be 3.4 billion USD.