Most often, residents of Georgia travel around the country to visit relatives or friends, as well as to make purchases.

The number of domestic tourists in Georgia in 2020 decreased by 8.3% compared to 2019, according to the website of the National Statistics Service of Georgia "Sakstat".

According to the ministry, in 2020, on average, 910.8 thousand residents of Georgia traveled in Georgia per month, who made one million trips to other localities, of which 480.4 thousand were tourists.

The number of tourists visits last year on average per month is 9.5% more than in 2019.

Domestic tourism has not fallen as much as foreign tourism

The record-breaking success of tourism in 2019, when the number of international travelers exceeded 9.3 million and industry revenues totaled $ 3.3 billion, suggested that 2020 will be even better. However, the pandemic has destroyed all the plans and hopes of the tourism industry. Revenues in 2020 from tourism fell to an incredibly low level – 427.7 thousand dollars, with the number of international travelers in 1.7 million.

In the spring of 2020, Georgia introduced strict restrictions, including on long-distance transportation, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Since June 15, domestic tourism has been officially opened in the country and the country's authorities are calling on citizens to rest this year at home and help the country in this area.

Since the end of June, the National Tourism Administration has launched a new campaign to support domestic tourism in the post-pandemic period- "Discover what is yours-travel around Georgia". Together with traditional tourist destinations, the tourism administration promotes new interesting tourist products and activities in the regions, which will help the development of hotels, catering facilities, transport companies, guides, and so on.

The hope that tourism in 2020, though partially, will take place, was until the last. And although foreigners no longer came to the country, the authorities placed high hopes on the development of domestic tourism. Residents were encouraged to help the industry and give preference to recreation in the country's resorts. Moreover, many hotels have lowered their rates, and in contrast to previous years, holidays in the same Batumi, became almost 30% cheaper. However, the second wave of coronavirus in the fall of 2020 again led to the re-introduction of strict restrictions.

Tourism expert Niko Kvaratskhelia believes that the income from domestic tourism has always been meager.

"Domestic tourism does not play a special role in the Georgian tourism itself, we stand on international tourism, mainly neighboring tourism. They come from Azerbaijan, Turkey, Armenia, Russia and a little from Ukraine. These countries provide somewhere more than 75% of all tourists and income. It did not happen, everything collapsed, the year was very bad. At first, we expected that there would be no summer tourism, then there would be winter tourism. The winter one was gone, too. Now we expect that the summer will be better," Kvaratskhelia said in an interview with Sputnik Georgia.

At the same time, the expert stressed that no one knows whether it will be better, because the virus is very dangerous, and the world is so fragile.

Sputnik-georgia.ru