11-12-2015
During the third quarter of 2015, the number of tourists staying in hotels and other tourist facilities in Riga rose by 2% from the same period a year ago to 390,317, while the number of overnight amount to 720,369, the Riga Tourism Development Bureau said, citing information from the Central Statistics Bureau.
German tourists made up the largest share of all foreign tourists accommodated in Riga in the third quarter of 2015, or 15.3%, 9.4% of tourists came from Russia, 7.5% from Estonia, 6.8% from Finland, 5.9% from Lithuania, 5.9% from Sweden, 5.0% from Norway and 4.7 from the UK, the agency's representative Anna Blaua told LETA.
The steepest increase in tourists from the agency's target countries was recorded from Estonia, with the number of tourists from this neighbor country jumping 44.0%. The number of Lithuanian tourists grew 28.4% as many fans arrived in Riga for the men's European basketball championship games.
"We, like the tourism industry in general, have been concentrating on a number of new markets this year, and our efforts have directly reflected in the positive tourist statistics,'' said Vita Jermolovica, the head of the Riga Tourism Development Bureau. "Hotels been mostly serving guests from the usual countries, but there are also some newcomers, such as Spaniards, who have overtaken travelers from the nearby Belarus and Poland".
"We have also seen a significant number of tourists arriving from countries like the United States, Switzerland and Japan. Until now there countries have not been on the list of our prioritized countries, but statistics show that they have potential," Jermolovica said.
In the third quarter of 2015, there were 122 tourist facilities and 14,629 beds available to tourists in Riga.
