Foreign travelers stay longer, spend less in Latvia

Foreign travelers to Latvia tended to stay longer but spent less than in 2016, according to data released by the Baltic country's statistics office on Wednesday.

Foreign travelers' average length of stay in Latvia grew by 0.9 nights from 2015 to 4.9 nights in 2016, with the overall number of nights spent by foreign travelers in Latvia rising by 7.8 percent on year to 8.8 million, the statistics office reported.

However, the total amount of money spent by foreign travelers in Latvia decreased by 97 million euros (105 million U.S. dollars), or 13.1 percent from 2015 to 645.2 million euros (702 million dollars) last year.

Statistics showed that in 2016 foreigners crossed the Latvian border 6.8 million times, down 0.7 percent from 2015.

While the number of overnight travelers from Poland rose by 8.6 percent, from Lithuania by 8.5 percent, from Germany by 6.7 percent and from the UK by 4.8 percent. the number of overnight travelers from Sweden fell by 37.1 percent, from Belgium by 34.6 percent, from the Czech Republic by 23.4 percent, from Russia by 20.3 percent and from Estonia by 7 percent.

Of all foreign travelers staying in Latvia for several days last year, 93 percent arrived as tourists, with 47.7 percent of them being holidaymakers, 26.1 percent visiting friends and relatives and 19.2 percent making business trips. Seven percent visited Latvia for other purposes.

Last year, road transport was used by 49.8 percent of foreign travelers who spent several days in Latvia, 44.5 percent arrived by plane, 2.1 percent by ships and 3.6 percent by train. Endit