Latvian hotels report 1.6 pct increase in tourist numbers in 2019

Latvian hotels, guest houses and other tourist facilities received 2.85 million foreign and local guests in 2019, an increase of 1.6 percent compared to a year before, the national statistics office informed Friday.

The number of nights spent by foreign and local tourists in hotels and other tourist facilities rose by 2.6 percent on year to 5.51 million, statistics showed.

In 2019, the Latvian hotels and other tourist facilities received 1.95 million foreign tourists, up 1.1 percent against the previous year.

Foreign tourists visiting Latvia in 2019 came mainly from Russia, Germany, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and the UK.

Meanwhile, the number of tourists from Japan, Canada, the United States, China, Italy and Norway dropped last year.

A vast majority of the foreign tourists visiting Latvia last year, or 75 percent, stayed in the capital city Riga, while 8.9 percent lodged in Latvia's Baltic seaside resort Jurmala and 2 percent in Liepaja in southwestern Latvia.