Analytics, Latvia, Tourism

Despite the promotion activities by tourism professionals, Latvia's recognizability remains rather low which is one of the problems in the tourism industry, she said, adding that representatives of other industries should also make effort to increase Latvia's recognizability so that people in other countries would know where and what Latvia was and what it could offer.

"So far Latvia's recognizability is rather low even in the markets in the same region, for example, Scandinavia," the director of the Tourism Department said.

Moreover, Latvia had to compete not only with neighboring countries that had similar offers for tourists but also, for example, with the Mediterranean countries that had plenty of sun and warm sea. For the Latvian tourism industry to be competitive, it had to find its niche, Sirava said.

Recently the Tourism Department has been working to reduce seasonality in the Latvian tourism industry, focusing on development of business tourism and food tourism, for example. There are also other types of tourism that do not depend so much on weather conditions, she said.

As reported, the number of nights spent by tourists at Latvia's hotels and other tourist facilities in the first nine months of 2016 rose by 7.2% against the same period a year ago to 3.515 mln. In January-September this year, Latvian hotels and other tourist facilities received 1.84 mln guests, up 7.1% y-o-y, including 1.26 mln foreign visitors, which was a 5.7% rise from the nine-month period in 2015