TOURISM ADVICE

  • 2007-10-31
  • Ivan G., Copenhagen
May I offer the city of Riga a bit of advice concerning tourism?

I just returned from my second visit to Riga. The first was not overly positive as members of my party and myself experienced a couple of situations where taxi drivers, doormen and people on the street quite obviously were trying to cheat or blackmail us. I agreed with myself that I probably was unfortunate so I was not worried [about returning for] a job team building trip...

I just returned today [and] I'm sorry to say that there were several occasions once again where the morals of the people we ran into [meant they] were not good representatives of the population of Latvia. Once again it included taxi drivers, doormen who wanted additional fees to let us in (blackmail), and on Sunday it was topped off with physical attacks from local hooligans in a Narvesen kiosk. They spoke to us in the native language so there was no chance of meaningful communication, however it was obvious that we were not welcome as we stood in line to pay for our soft drinks.

All in all this will probably be the last visit to your beautiful and historic city. However, for future tourists I would recommend that you treat them better, then they will be back, they will recommend Riga/Latvia to their friends and they will generate more money for you.
I travel all over the world and have never experienced these problems to this degree anywhere else. I hope you appreciate my honest feedback and I hope good men and women can change things for the better.
 

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