Visitors spent 230.8 thousand nights at the establishments, which is 41.4 % more than in February a year ago.
In February 2023 non-resident arrivals at the tourist accommodation establishments accounted for 54.5 % or 70.1 thousand people, which is 92.2 % more than in February a year ago and 29.7 % fewer than before the pandemic in February 2020. The number of nights spent by non-residents, compared to February 2022, has grown by 77.6 % and comprised 129.6 thousand. Non-residents on average spent 1.8 nights at the tourist accommodation.
The greatest number of non-resident travellers came from Lithuania (12.8 thousand), Estonia (10.1 thousand), the United Kingdom (6.4 thousand), Germany (4.6 thousand), Finland (3.9 thousand) and Poland (3.1 thousand).
Most non-residents were hosted in Riga (77.5 %), followed by Jūrmala (5.9 %), Mārupe municipality (5.3 %), Liepāja (2.1 %), Valmiera municipality (1.1 %), Sigulda municipality and Daugavpils (1 %).
The importance of tourism to Latvia's economy was underlined by Eurostat figures also published April 14 which show that in 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic heavily hit the tourism sector, the gross value added to the Latvian economy directly generated by tourism amounted to 4.8% – higher than the EU average of 4.5%.
Among the countries for which data are available, the highest shares of tourism in total gross value added were observed in Croatia (11%), Portugal (8%), Spain (7%), Italy (6%) and Austria (5%). In absolute terms, the highest tourism direct gross value added was generated in Germany (€124 billion), followed by Italy (€100 billion) and France (€87 billion).