Estonia, Latvia, Port, Tourism, Transport

The responses were filed by the Port of Tallinn subsidiary TS Laevad OU and the privately owned AS Kihnu Veeteed and AS Saaremaa Laevaliinid.

Saaremaa municipality governor Madis Kallas said that as the next step a meeting is planned with the operators. The companies that responded to the call have no clear preference as regards the ports that the boat would sail from and to.

The two other Estonian companies that were sent an invitation are Lindaliin and Tallink Grupp.

As part of the plan to re-establish a boat connection between Saaremaa and Latvia, Kallas has sent letters to the mayors of Riga and Ventspils and to the managers of the ports of Riga and Ventspils. In addition, Aado Keskpaik, project manager at the Institute for Future Studies at Tallinn University, and Juri Sakkeus, manager of Sakiconsult OU, visited the two Latvian cities last month.

"Since the local community decided that we will look at whether it would be possible to open a boat service to Riga or Ventspils and whether it would be feasible, we now need find out what our partners, the other cities, think of it," Kallas said.

A preliminary survey about the viability of a boat service between Estonia's largest island and Latvia, commissioned from the company OU Arenguruum, is due to be completed in mid-December. According to the authors of the survey the next steps on the plan depend on the interest of potential operators in the first place.