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Hotels in Riga see number of tourists grow 15.6 pct in 2014

Xinhua, February 27, 2015 Adjust font size:

The number of people staying at hotels in Riga grew by 15.6 percent last year to 1.123 million, the Riga Tourism Development Bureau said, citing the national statistics office's data.

About two million tourists visited the Latvian capital city in 2014.

lAnna Blaua, a spokeswoman for the Riga Tourism Development Bureau, said that tourists from Russia made up 18.4 percent of the total number of tourists staying at Riga's hotels and other tourist facilities in 2014, while Germans accounted for 11.9 percent, Estonians for 7.2 percent, Lithuanians for 6.3 percent, Norwegians for 5.8 percent, Finns for 5.7 percent, Swedes for 5 percent and Brits for 4.8 percent.

The steepest rise in tourist numbers was from Britain, as the number of British tourists jumped 50 percent last year. Also, the number of tourists from Germany rose 40 percent, from Belgium 35 percent, from Denmark 30 percent and from Belarus 30 percent.

Even though the number of tourists from Russia fell 6.5 percent last year, they still make up the highest percentage of tourists staying at hotels in Riga, said Blaua.

Responding to the drop of Russian tourists, the Riga Tourism Development Bureau has shifted its focus to Western countries, the bureau's representative Vita Jermolajeva said, noting that various marketing activities had helped maintain steady tourist growth in the Latvian capital.

At the end of 2014 there were 119 tourist facilities with a total of 13,871 beds in Riga.

The Riga Tourism Development Office was established in late 2009 by the Riga City Council, airBaltic national carrier, the Latvian Hotel and Restaurant Association and the Association of Latvian Tourism Agents to promote tourism and Riga as a tourism destination. Endit