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International Internet Magazine. Baltic States news & analytics Thursday, 28.03.2024, 21:11

Latvia hosts over 1000 media isits in 2015

Alla Petrova, BC, Riga, 21.01.2016.Print version
The Latvian airline airBaltic and Latvian organisations and institutions hosted over 1000 international journalists on media trips in 2015, reported BC vice president of corporate communications at airBaltic Janis Vanags.

Martin Gauss, Chief Executive Officer of airBaltic: “The aviation industry is vital for the economy. In Latvia alone, it supports almost 3% of the gross domestic product and 2% of all active jobs. Naturally, our focus is to promote Latvia and the Baltic region as a destination via media to attract travellers who spend their money in the local economy, thus supporting growth and jobs.”

In 2015, airBaltic hosted 472 media visits, up +30% compared to the previous year when the carrier hosted 363 media visits. The media representatives arriving in Latvia come from all over the world with the largest groups of journalists originating from Germany (11%), Austria (6%), France (5%), UK (5%), Switzerland (4%) and Finland (4%).

 

Furthermore, Latvia hosted over 800 journalists from 42 countries during the Presidency of the Council of the EU in the first six months of 2015. In addition, more than 200 international media visits were hosted by the Rīga Tourism Development Bureau (Live Rīga).

 

Vita Jermolovica, Chairperson of the Board of the Riga Tourism Development Bureau: “Although the official tourism data are being finalised for last year, our peak season in summer 2015 saw most of the tourists arrive from Germany (15.3%), Russia (9.4%), Estonia (7.5%), Finland (6.8%) and Lithuania (5.9%). But we also see that more and more tourists from Western Europe are interested in our region. For example, Riga Tourism information centre numbers show that travellers from Benilux countries had significantly increased over the last year and were up by 37%, as well as travellers from Spain – up by 25%, but from France – up by 17%.  We have reached these numbers partly because of our intense and hard work with journalists and bloggers we host from these countries, who afterwards spread the word and experience they have had in our beautiful country.”






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