The municipality considers the tourist season to be successful so far. The hospitality industry, on the other hand, points to insufficient support. Although there are more tourists, this number still does not reach the indicators of the industry before the Covid pandemic and many companies are working almost without profit.
In the first seven months of this year, around 600,000 tourists visited Riga, but as the end of the tourist season approaches, it is predicted that more than a million tourists will have visited Riga this year, according to the Riga Investment and Tourism Agency. This year the increase has been 14%, in some months it has reached 25%.
"This data is only from hotels, it also does not include the apartment segment, which, according to last year's data, looks like it is recovering much better than hotels. It is for priority markets where we compete directly with Tallinn and Estonia that we see that we are able to attract more tourists than our direct competitors. One such market is Germany," says the head of the agency, Fredis Bikovs.
The number of tourists from Germany increased by 38% in the first half of the year. This year there were more tourists from Great Britain, thanks to improved cooperation with airlines. In total, around 1.5 million euros were spent on 13 different tourism campaigns this year, which will bear fruit in the coming years, it is hoped.
Negotiations are currently underway with several companies about the possibility of restoring ferry traffic with Sweden, which is also an important tourism market for Latvia. The mayor of Riga, Vilnis Ķirsis (New Unity party), said that a tourism tax introduced two years ago has helped give the sector additional money.
"Also, different events, maybe next year such an anchor event will be EuroBasket, which will definitely have a lot of visitors. And one more thing, we are continuing negotiations on ferry traffic between Rīga and Stockholm. There are various problems, namely, the lack of ships, I really hope that we will be able to solve this case," emphasized Ķirsis.
Meanwhile, the hospitality industry continues to point to problems. Although there was record turnover of 1.2 billion euros last year, and this year it could increase even more, the purchasing power of consumers has fallen, the prices of raw materials in catering have risen significantly, and there is also a shortage of employees. As a result, the industry works almost without profit, explains the Latvian Hotel and Restaurant Association.
Its president Andris Kalniņš states that Latvia is still in last place in the European Union when measuring the return of the flow of foreign tourists to pre-Covid levels. Latvia also has the lowest investments from the state both in tourism marketing and in other related activities.
"And the officials and politicians do not have this awareness that it is an important export industry. We have also studied the experience of all the European Union member states – in most of the European Union member states, the reduced VAT rate for public catering services was introduced, and we see that it makes those companies a lot more competitive," says Kalniņš.
On October 31, representatives of the hospitality industry will hold a demonstration in front of the Saeima (parliament) and ask for a reduced value added tax rate of 12% for public catering services.
