- Guesthouses, motels filled to the brim
If hotel walls could talk, they’d have a lot to say about 2004. A total of 1.12 million people stayed at hotels and other accommodation establishments last year, a surge of 32 percent over 2003, Lithuania’s Statistics Department reported last month.
- In brief
Feliks Magus, CEO of Estonia’s Reval Hotel Group, will resign on April 1. He is leaving the position to become a board member and shareholder of OU Estap, a company that produces pet bedding.
- Conferences, spa tourism help to fill the long winter void
Accommodation businesses, along with the rest of the tourism industry, are using spa and conference services to help entice visitors to the country during the long and slow winter months.
- Hotels aim to overcome the low season
The Baltic hospitality industry’s main problems have always been seasonal. This could soon change. Before EU accession, the industry’s chief headache was how to fill hotels in the winter.
- Hotels batten down for uncertain winter
Things have been looking brighter for Estonia’s hospitality industry. The number of visitors in just about every region is on a sharp upswing, and Tallinn itself recorded a 26 percent jump in the number of hotel guests in the first half of 2004.
- Riga struggles to accommodate tourism boom
There are simply no places to stay in Riga. All hotels – from five-stars to two-stars, are packed. Even the suburban Riga campsites were overcrowded with tents and parked cars until the first frost of September.
- A long-awaited novelty in the three-star range
Paul Taylor and Michael Pilkington had an idea. Based on feedback they had received over the years from businessmen and tourists visiting the Baltics, they saw a golden opportunity for a no-nonsense hotel chain in the three-star range.
- Nature calls, but Tallinn still most popular
According to a January 2003 survey by the Emor pollster, about 51 percent of Estonians aged 18 to 49 went for a trip inside the country for at least two days.
- Latvia needs year-round approach to fill hotel rooms
With hotel occupancy levels set to drop drastically this winter, many leaders in the hospitality industry see room for improvement in how Latvia plans and promotes itself as a destination for tourism and business conferences.
- Viru getting much-needed facelift
The Viru Hotel, the landmark Tallinn establishment that became a part of the Finnish Sokos hotel chain in September, recently opened the doors to its new conference center and restaurant, and plans to rebuild the hotel’s dreary facade are proceeding.
- Satiated with room space – for the time being
While a quick survey of the Vilnius skyline reveals a panorama of intensive change, perhaps the most important alteration in the city’s landscape of interest to visitors as well as city managers this year is the mushrooming in hotel capacity.
- Tallinn’s hotels struggling to accommodate all
“Even though so many new hotels have recently emerged in Tallinn, there are still not enough hotel rooms for visitors,” warned Tallinn This Week in its most recent edition.
- Hotels need state cooperation to boost occupancy
Despite the strong growth in Latvia’s hotel industry over the past year, hotel owners complain that the government is falling short in its efforts to promote Latvia as a tourist destination and to develop a national tourist-accommodating infrastructure.
- Pickpockets, beggars, squalid busses tarnish Tallinn
Although Estonians like to consider themselves as a Nordic people, they are – perhaps more often than they like – placed on the same peg as their Baltic neighbors to the south.