Campaign to promote Estonia in Latvia is a success
A Latvian-based tourism campaign highlighting the merits of a holiday in the Estonian countryside has wrapped up successfully. Co-financed from the European Regional Development Fund, the campaign website at www.visitestonia.com received 20,000 visitors, indicating major interest in spending a holiday in a natural setting in Estonia. The Latvian press called the campaign a good example to be followed in promoting Latvia, and suggested that Latvia would do well to advertise similar alternative tourism opportunities to audiences in neighbouring markets.
One reason for the media coverage can be put down to the unorthodox approach. Besides outdoor media ads, a large-scale open air exhibition of photographs in the Riga city centre drew many in the metropolitan area. The exhibition, titled "Experiences from Estonia", was based on travel photographs taken by actual Latvian families along with excerpts from their travel journals. In addition, a fold-up map of Estonia bearing the campaign message appeared between the pages of major newspapers, helping people locate the holiday destinations more easily.
Launched in June, the campaign focused on back-to-nature holidays on the strength of a 2008 survey of the Latvian population which revealed that Latvians would choose Estonia as their holiday destination above all for the splendid natural scenery, especially on the islands. Over one-half of the respondents cited scenic locations as a "very important" consideration, alongside the proximity of Estonia to Latvia.
"The fact that Latvian tourists have a high regard for our nature, generally arrive here in their own vehicles and put together their own itinerary, means that they take an interest in different regions throughout Estonia, without restricting themselves to larger cities. Besides increasing the amount of travel in low season, getting tourists to travel to all parts of Estonia, not just to the cities, is certainly one of the keys to Estonian tourism growth," said the director of Enterprise Estonia's tourism development centre, Tarmo Mutso.
Banners on websites also linked to the campaign site, and prizes lay in store for those who answered all of the questions in an Estonia quiz correctly. The grand prize was a family holiday package to Võru County, with visits to naturally scenic parks and spas.
In 2008, Estonia was the second-most important destination for Latvians, after Lithuania. Estonia was the destination for 16% of Latvians' trips abroad last year, with 79,527 Latvian tourists staying with Estonian lodging providers. Latvians ranked fifth in terms of all foreign tourists lodged, after tourists from Finland, Germany, Sweden and Russia.
"Over one-half of the Latvians who visited Estonia have been here more than ten times. This poses a challenge to us and our tourism enterprises to find innovative solutions for keeping Latvian interest in Estonia high," said Mutso.
The creative concepts for the campaign were developed by ad agency Kontuur Leo Burnett and they can be seen at http://www.eas.ee/images/doc/uudised/lat-fotod.pdf
