Despite the increase in the number of foreign guests, Latvia remains last in the EU in terms of tourism recovery after the pandemic. The reasons are weak marketing abroad and overly alarming rhetoric about safety, says Andris Kalniņš, president of the Latvian Association of Hotels and Restaurants.
According to statistics for the third quarter of this year, the number of foreign guests in Latvia has increased by 6-7 percent compared to the same period last year. However, when comparing the turnover of the tourism industry to pre-COVID levels, we are still lagging behind by 14-15 percent. This lag is the largest among all European Union countries, reports LSM+.
The main problem of this lag, Kalniņš believes, is the insufficient marketing of Latvia abroad. "Lithuanians and Estonians promote themselves much more actively than we do. While our budget for attracting foreign tourists is 2.5 million, in Lithuania it is 6 million, and in Estonia, it is about 10 million. Accordingly, their return is completely different," emphasizes the expert.
However, advertising is not everything. Another factor hindering the influx of foreign tourists is geopolitics and the proximity of the borders of the Russian Federation and Belarus. The ongoing war nearby scares people away, but this factor is relevant for all three countries. Why does it have the most dramatic effect in Latvia?
"We need to think about our public rhetoric — to talk less about how we are on the brink of war, that our neighbor is about to attack us. On the contrary, we should emphasize that we are in the European Union and that it is safe here," Kalniņš believes.
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