The extent to which Latvia’s tourism sector relies upon its peak season is underlined in new data published by Eurostat November 27.
“Dealing with seasonality is a key policy issue in tourism. The phenomenon of seasonality affects most destinations in the EU, albeit at different levels… The concentration of tourism demand in a limited number of months – often July and August – can impact on the environment (e.g. waste production, water and energy use), but also on the labor market conditions and quality of service provided or support for tourism by local communities. Seasonality can also affect the economic performance of the tourism industries, as infrastructure and workforce are used only for part of the year, leading to higher costs and lower profitability,” said Eurostat by way of preamble.
In 7 EU regions, located in Bulgaria, Greece, France, Croatia, Italy and Romania, more than half of the tourism nights were spent during July or August, the top 2 months in these regions; also the Albanian region of Veri sees more than half of its tourists in July or August. All these regions are coastal regions.
While Latvia’s data is not so seasonal as these regions, it is still more dependent upon the peak months than Estonia or Lithuania.
In 2023, July and August were by far the most popular months for tourists to visit Latvia, with 703,000 recorded in July and 611,000 in August. The next most popular month was June (466,000) while the least popular month for tourists to visit was January (217,000).
July and August accounted for 30.1% of Latvia’s tourist numbers, while in Estonia this figure was 27.0% and in Lithuania it was 27.5%.
Eurostat poined out that capital cities across the continent tend to be less seasonal in nature than other regions.
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