In brief - 2005-03-30

  • 2005-03-30
Legend Management, a hotel and spa operator, will enter the Riga market this summer with a moderately priced hotel. Albert Hotel will be situated in downtown Riga and will include 246 rooms, a restaurant/bar and two conference rooms fitting 150 people. The international real estate company Larix Property owns the hotel, which will be operated by Legendhotels Latvia, a subsidiary of Legend Management. The latter currently owns hotels only in Estonia.

The number of Finnish tourists accommodated in western Estonia during January 2005 was down by 12 percent year-on-year, while the number of Estonian visitors soared 38 percent, the Statistical Office reports. Hotels received 95,200 tourists in January, an increase of 22 percent compared with 2004. Almost half, or 40 percent, were residents of Estonia, 34 percent came from Finland and 26 percent from other countries. Tourists stayed in hotels for an average of two days. Some 43 percent of visitors were on holiday and 28 percent on a business trip.

SOK of Finland will build a new hotel costing some 15 million euros in downtown Tallinn next to the group's Sokos Hotel Viru. SOK announced that its subsidiary, Sokotel, had concluded a preliminary agreement with Pontos Group on the hotel's construction. The new 180-room, and 17-story hotel is set to open in spring 2007, and will employ more than 100 people. Construction will begin this fall. Pontos, the would-be owner of the hotel, is a real estate investment company belonging to Finland's SRV construction group.

Lithuanian Airlines, a state-owned carrier, opened direct routes from Vilnius to Barcelona and St. Petersburg last week and will add two new routes in the near future. The company's summer schedule, which began on March 27, also increased the number of flights to Brussels, Dublin, Kiev and Paris, and added extra seats on flights to Brussels, Moscow and Milan. "We intend to launch direct flights on two additional new routes during the season. Negotiations with airports and ground service companies on these routes have already been launched," said CEO Vidas Zvinys. During the summer season, the airline will offer regular flights from Vilnius and Palanga to 17 European destinations, including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Hanover, Helsinki, Kiev, London, Madrid, Moscow, Milan, Paris, St. Petersburg and Stockholm.