9. Conclusions and recommendations
The project was written in order to investigate Latvia as a potential tourism place for more tourists to visit. The emphasize was put on different theories, tourism behaviour, best marketing strategies for Latvia, niche tourism as a best strategy for Latvia’s tourism industry. Also the mass and niche tourism was compared to put more stress which is more suitable for Latvia.
Latvia being the part of the Baltic Sea Area is a destination with a long history of tourism and known in the domestic market. Despite clear branding efforts are being made, the destination still faces some challenges in communicating their brand towards the targeted markets. Latvia enhance the loyalty of the consumer with the destination, thus, a head focused marketing strategy would not result in a unique connection to the destination and thereby results in a weak image of the destination. Another explanation for the weak image of the destination and the destination is being relatively unknown for foreigners. By analyzing niche tourism the issues of niche tourism, the researcher tried to classify Latvia in general and global scope of tourism industry.
Moreover the point of where niche tourism is essential, it was also looked at changes in demand, the consumer’s needs and values towards their holidays.
It was also discussed several impacts and threats that prevents Latvia from a good touristic place. First is the global economical crisis, then not well developed marketing strategies and focuses on specific target groups and finally need for deep analyses of positioning destination to European markets.
The problems mentioned here, and based on the research is that a new brand for Latvia is needed (although it needs to be mentioned that other e.g. social factors, which are not being discussed here, might have an influence on the small number of foreign tourists visiting the destination). To change the current image might only be achieved in a long terms branding strategy. Positioning of destination to European market plays a significant role to achieve it. In 2009 – Riga was positioned in the project “Live Riga ‘ It was positioned as a city easy to reach but emotionally hard to leave. It was good although Latvia has to be positioned as a country in total not only the capital of the state.
2010 Latvia is positioned as the place to relax and change the pace of life enjoying the detail oriented recreation. The author appreciates the idea to use now worldwide popular trend towards “slow living “ but it does not address all markets. The results are not filed up yet for 2010.
According to all research done to achieve and prove the tourism in Latvia much work has to be invested, theoretical and practical by tourist destination positioning capabilities and development, change the marketing strategies, focus on the target groups, changes of demands and focus on developing niche tourism opportunities and beside looking for opportunity to make offers for mass tourism as well.
The author “s recommendations for achieving the stated goals are:
1) Latvia has to be unique and to surprise foreign tourists by positioning itself as the place of destination to find something unfamiliar to other tourism places such as wild life (57 % of Latvia’s territory is covered by forests), hunting, adventures in ex –Soviet military camps and even cemetery tourism lately being very popular.
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