Lithuania – a New Tourist Destination

During the last two decades, the development of tourism industry in Lithuania has been largely influenced by some political changes. Namely: the collapse of the Soviet Union and Lithuania’s accession to the European Union. After Lithuania regained independence in 1991, communication with the rest of the world in the political, economic, scientific, cultural and many other fields has became far more intense. The growth of tourism sector has been greatly accelerated when, in 2004, Lithuania entered the EU. During the last three years, there has been a significant tourist increase in Lithuania.

According to data given by the Department of Statistics to the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, the total number of foreign tourists increased by 20% reaching 1.8 million in 2004. The rise was mainly conditioned by tourists from EU15.

The number of nights spent by foreigners soared 34.6 % as compared with the year 2003. The increase of the guest number from different European countries such as Germany, Poland, Latvia, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, UK, and Ireland varied from about 15 to 50%. The number of guests from France, Austria, Spain and Italy rocketed twice.

The increase of the number of foreign tourists who stayed at major resort town hotels and guesthouses is also impressive: it varied from about 71 to 176% as compared to the year 2003, which shows that Lithuania is becoming a popular holiday destination among foreigners.

Similar tendencies in incoming tourism can be observed in the figures of 2006 as compared to 2005. According to the Lithuanian border crossing data, during the first half of 2006 (excluding EU25 and EFTA), the number of foreign tourists which reached 985.7 increased by 11.1 %.

Figures given by the Lithuanian Department of Statistics illustrate that Lithuanian travel agencies have catered 8696 foreigners during the first quarter of 2006, which is 19.0% more than in 2005 the same period.
Meanwhile the number of foreign visitors who stayed at Lithuanian accommodation establishments in January - March 2006 rose by 15.5% as compared to the same period of the proceeding year.

The increasing number of foreigners visiting Lithuanian tourist information centres indicates that more and more travellers and holiday makers from abroad (most of them German, Polish, Russian, Latvian, French, Great Britain, Finland, USA) are interested in recreation and leisure time opportunities in Lithuania. The most popular Lithuanian cities among foreign tourists are: the seaport Klaipëda, the capital Vilnius, the resort towns Palanga, Druskininkai, and Nida.

On the whole, it can be seen from the figures that Lithuania maintains a positive travel balance and is quite fast to join the intra-EU tourism area. While further developing Lithuanian tourism infrastructure, i.e. creating new services and improving the existing ones, as well as preserving and promoting the uniqueness of the country, incoming tourism in Lithuania is very likely to keep on growing.

Due to the economic and historical circumstances, Lithuania is still a country to be discovered, which is one of the reasons why Lithuania is a new travel destination among foreign tourists.

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