Is Riga a role model for tourism?
Riga’s historic charm and sustainable tourism goals are transforming its reputation as a perfect destination for a city trip. Two years into its 2027 strategy, how is Latvia’s capital delivering on its promise?
By: Marylou Gaissert
A not-too-crowded old town, lots of pretty Art Nouveau buildings and a Christmas market that ranks among the top five in Europe. Sounds nice? This is what the City of Riga promises people when they visit the Latvian capital.
To back up all these promises, the city has a 52-page strategy paper setting out nine priorities. It took three years to prepare, and many people worked on it. NGOs, citizens and authorities were involved in the strategy paper itself, and now the programme is being implemented by all Riga City Council departments, institutions and companies.
The strategy paper has nine different priorities that are all equally important and complement each other. 12/12/24. Source: Marylou Gaissert
LiveRiga, the city’s tourism and investment agency, played a key role in developing Riga’s 2027 strategy paper.
The document outlines ambitious goals, stating, “For attracting more tourists, talents and investors to the city it is important to send a clear message about the values and strengths of Riga around the world.”
Madara Oga, a senior project manager at LiveRiga’s marketing department, collaborates with businesses and individuals looking to invest in Riga. She described the city as “very green and walkable,” offering “a lot of things without being too overcrowded.”
Madara Oga thinks that Riga has a lot to offer for tourists. 03/12/24. Photo source: Marylou Gaissert
No fear of overtourism
The city is confident that it won’t be overcrowded for a long time to come. “I think it is one of Riga’s charms that we have a lot of people living here but they are spread in different districts in the city”, Oga said. She also thinks that the locals understand that tourism is one of Riga’s top incomes.
Although one-third of Latvia’s population already lives in the capital, Riga is aiming to attract even more visitors. 12/12/24. Photo source: Marylou Gaissert
Ēriks Lingebērziņš is an associate professor at the Faculty of International Tourism at Turiba University in Riga. He also doesn’t think that overtourism will become a problem in Latvia in general.
“In Latvia we could easily double the current number of international tourists.”
Ēriks Lingebērziņš, associate professor at the Faculty of International Tourism at Turiba University
Ēriks Lingebērziņš sees a lot of potential in working on tourism in Europe together instead of every country on its own. 03/12/24. Photo source: Marylou Gaissert
Since there are a lot of big cities in Europe that have problems with overtourism he points out that the small domestic market is what makes the difference between the Baltic States and Finland and the rest of Europe. “In places like Spain, Italy or Germany, for example, you have a huge domestic market plus the international tourists, then you start having the problem. With 1.9 million inhabitants there is no big domestic market and therefore we need more tourists”, he said.
According to him this is a global issue. He thinks that Europe needs to talk about the redistribution of tourists and to ask why people go to the places they go to. Lingebērziņš believes that there are alternatives in different places where tourists can get a similar product.
“Why should everyone go to Vienna to see Art Nouveau when it exists here in Riga much more, without the crowd, also in June or August?“
Ēriks Lingebērziņš, associate professor at the Faculty of International Tourism at Turiba University
He mentioned that tourism planning and policy is extremely local. “The coordination in the European Union, for example, in exporting energy or cars is big”, he said. For Lingebērziņš “exporting tourism” could be a solution to improve the impact of tourists on large cities in general.
The “Art Nouveau” Buildings in Riga are quite close to the Old Town and are one of the things Riga is famous for. 04/12/24 Photo source: Marylou Gaissert
Christmas market as a new selling point
In December, the Christmas market in Riga’s Old Town is one of the biggest attractions. Lingebērziņš thinks that December became the high season after the Covid pandemic because people in Riga realized that this could be another selling point. “Before that, the Christmas market was more for locals”, he said. Now the public and private sector are compromising on the message they want to spread.
The City wants to attract more tourists also in the winter season, that is why they want to become the Christmas market to a more famous attraction. 01/12/24. Photo source: Marylou Gaissert
He is sure that this will develop even further in the coming years and that the major Baltic cities will become famous Christmas market destinations in Europe. The city’s tourism and investment agency also sees great potential in the Christmas season. Its winter campaign includes a separate landing page for the Christmas market.
Impact of the war
A big challenge for the city was also to replace the tourists from Russia. Since the war in Ukraine began almost three years ago, the city has seen a drop in Russian and Belarusian tourists. That is also a reason why the tourism agency is working hard right now to attract more tourists to the city.
Madara Oga believes that people from outside of Europe feel that the war is taking place very close to Latvia, while people from Europe are not afraid. But she also mentioned that there have been escalating moments in recent years where people have decided not to come to Latvia or not to hold their event there because they were scared. The tourism agency managed to replace the decline by launching campaigns in countries like Poland and Finland and focusing on them as their main market this year.
Lingebērziņš said that Latvia in general has lost a third of all tourists because they used to come from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. According to him, Riga is an example of how to replace these tourists in a good way. “On average it has been better replaced in Riga than in Latvia in general.”
Riga and Latvia are on track to recover in the tourism sector, following the decline caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 12/12/24. Photo source: Marylou Gaissert/Canva
After the major decline in the tourism sector during the Covid pandemic in 2020, Riga has recovered and exceeded the one million mark in 2023. According to the tourism agency a total of 80 % of the pre-pandemic level is expected to be reached in 2024.
Riga remains Latvia’s leading tourism center because 70 % of all foreign tourists in Latvia stayed in the capital city in 2023. Overall, most people from Lithuania and Estonia visited Latvia last year, followed by Germans. However, Finns and people from the United Kingdom also make up a large proportion of tourists in Latvia. This was confirmed by participating in a guided tour.
Emīls Dzelzkalējs is a 31-year-old Latvian who did guided tours in the city of Riga for eight years. For three months he has been working for “Riga Free Tour”, where he shows tourists the main attractions in the old town. He wants to give people another perspective on the city, especially in times of war in Europe, he said. According to him, the Baltic Germans have influenced the culture and the language of the city and that is why a lot of Germans who have Baltic roots are interested in visiting the city.
In November he also had a lot of people from Great Britain among the tourists on his tours. In his opinion, the reason for that is the affordability of the flights. During the actual tour there were tourists from Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Scotland, Portugal, Denmark and the UK. The tourists from the UK were especially interested in exploring the city and had a lot of questions.
Emīls Dzelzkalējs shows tourists from all over the world the Highlights of the Old Town. 01/12/24. Source: Marylou Gaissert
This shows that the campaigns of the tourism and investment agency in Riga are having a major impact and the reason why the agency can do a lot of those campaigns in other countries is special. It is because of the tourism tax model. The agency invested € 1.5 million in tourism development in 2024, which came from so-called tourism taxes.
These taxes are something that Lingebērziņš sees as an example of how tourism is linked to the industry in a good way. The City of Riga has a trust-based agreement with the tourism industry that the city will support initiatives. The money collected from the tourism tax will be used exclusively to promote the destination, he explained. “This is the marketing money that we all collect, and it works”, he said.
How to get along in the Baltics
Lingebērziņš also mentioned that because of its size, Riga is not a destination for a long trip. “To make that more sustainable it can be a good alternative to see all the capital cities of the Baltics in one trip”, he said. To improve the situation, LiveRiga is also working with tourism agencies in Vilnius and Tallinn to attract more tourists to the Baltics in general.
“We understand that we are small, each of our own and that we can attract further tourists only as a group, as the Baltics.”
Madara Oga, senior project manager at Rigas tourism and investment agency
For that, a new train was implemented to travel daily from Riga to Vilnius and one of the largest development projects in Riga is the Rail Baltica, which is an infrastructure project aimed at integrating the Baltic States with the European rail network. However, going through the central station in Riga as a tourist, one recognizable thing is that everything is written in Latvian.
Lingebērziņš explained that the language policy is extremely strict. “This is also part of the older immigration policy of being very self-protective when it comes to the language and all national issues”, he explained. “Of course this inconveniences tourists, there is a need for a bit more compromise and a bit more options to communicate with the visitors.” But he also thinks with different AI tools it should be easier to move around the city.
At the central station in Riga there are a lot of posters that show the train connection from Riga to Vilnius. They are in English but besides that almost every information is only in Latvian. 02/12/24. Source: Marylou Gaissert
Making Riga a name for itself as a tourist destination in Europe and profiting exclusively from tourism is the city’s overall goal and there is still a way to go. But with all these measures and ideas of the strategy paper for 2027, Riga is well on its way to achieving the goals, especially in the tourism sector, as the numbers show.