Latvia to win hearts and minds of Estonian tourists

  • 2004-04-15
  • Baltic News Service
RIGA - Latvia will be knocking on Estonia's door this year with a major marketing event in an effort to lure tourists there.

On April 15, 63,000 readers of Postimees, Estonia's largest daily, will receive a 24-page color brochure on Latvia. The brochure, containing informative material aiming to create interest in visiting the Baltic country, will be headed with the slogan: "Visit your neighbors - the Latvians!"
The campaign is being organized by the Latvian Tourism Development Agency and the Riga City Development Council in cooperation with Idea Media, a private firm.
The project's cost is estimated at 21,000 lats (31,300 euros).
The campaign comes at a time when interest in Latvia is particularly low among Estonians. If in 200over 146,000 Estonians visited Latvia, only 110,000 bothered to do so last year.
Later this year the outdoor advertisements about Latvia will also be pasted up throughout Estonia, while it is expected that a delegation of Estonian journalists will be invited to visit the country.
A similar project was launched in 200in Lithuania, resulting in a 65 percent boost in the number of Lithuanian tourists to 144,600.
Future tourism-boosting campaigns might be aimed at Finland, though the cost of attracting Finns could reach over 100,000 lats.
This year's state budget has earmarked 1 million lats for the funding of tourism development, and this amount is expected to double next year.
Sixty-three percent of this year's tourism funds will be spent on marketing.
Tourism specialists in Latvia expect that the influx of tourists to the country this year will be even higher than in previous years, as interest in the new EU state continues to rise.
Last year a record high number of foreign tourists visited Latvia, with some 2.47 million entries by foreigners registered on the country's borders, up by almost 200,000 on the previous year.
Most of the tourists visiting last year came from countries nearby Latvia, including Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Russia and Germany.