Bloomberg: For visitors seeking new destinations, Georgia offers a dramatic location with year-round attractions beyond the well-worn tourist trails of Europe.

With international travel opening up once more, people are seeking the new and undiscovered. In the latest Bloomberg Media travel survey, an overwhelming 61% of respondents declared that they were planning to explore new destinations. More than half are looking for adventure and want to immerse themselves in new cultures and cuisines, while 50% want to get closer to nature.

Georgia appears to be the perfect destination to satisfy this wish list. Visitors can expect a warm welcome, thanks to the country’s deep-seated culture of hospitality. A guest, the Georgian saying goes, “is a gift from god.”

What will first-time visitors find there, aside from friendly inhabitants? In this small country—half the size of the US state of Georgia, with which it shares its name—there is extraordinary natural, social and cultural diversity.

It’s hard to keep a good thing quiet: Tourist numbers in Georgia leapt by 66% between 2013 and 2018, and the annual number of international travelers reached 9.3 million pre-pandemic. To put that into context, Georgia’s population is a mere 3.7 million.

But while swelling tourism numbers have caused friction in some countries—in overexposed destinations such as Venice, Amsterdam and Barcelona—Georgia remains a relatively undiscovered, off-the-beaten-track nation, although there are direct flights to 53 cities.

Georgia is located at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, with its northern border dominated by the Caucasus Mountains. Many travelers are perhaps more familiar with the Caucasus in myth, as the mountains where the Titan Prometheus was chained as punishment for gifting fire to mankind.

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