The Live Riga marketing campaign paid immediate dividends in its first three months, with December, January and February all registering a sharp uptick in the number of visitors to Riga from the seven countries targeted in the launch campaign – Estonia, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Norway, Russia and Sweden. “We see that successful city branding, if done professionally, brings immediate and clear results,” says airBaltic’s chief commercial officer, Tero Taskila.
One welcome focus of the flawed property boom was on building new hotels, with the result that Riga now boasts accommodation to suit every taste and pocket, ranging from bargain-basement hostels to glitzy five-star spa complexes.
And while Russian technopop maestro DJ Smash’s club hit rightly proclaims Moscow Never Sleeps, Riga is hardly soporific either and is mercifully free of the type of overbearing face control and service with a snarl attitude that can make nightlife in the Russian capital such a chore. It’s no provincial backwater either, with Riga firmly established on the roster of venues for performances by top music acts as well as international DJs. What’s more, with vacancy rates having soared and rental values plummeted, landlords have been desperate to lease out empty premises, with the result that a new generation of young Latvian entrepreneurs have been finally able to afford to realize their dreams and open a bar, club, restaurant or shop. As Kalinovskis at Rietumu Banka recalls, that would have been unthinkable during the boom times. “Property prices became so expensive that it was impossible for people to set up businesses.” To ensure that the tourists lured to Riga by the advertising campaign enjoy their time Usakovs says that the city has beefed up security, creating a special tourist police squad staffed with multilingual officers to deal with problems faced by tourists. Usakovs is also proud of his efforts to crack down on tourist scams by turning the table of bar owners who overcharge tourists and then threaten them with violence if they don’t come up with as much as $4,000 for a bottle of local bubbly Rigas Shampanksa. Where revoking licences has failed to work – firms often re-register under a different name — Usakovs positively beams when he relates how the city authorities have turned to hardball but legal tactics such as cutting off rogue premises’ heating or ordering document checks by police every 15 minutes to help drive customers away and serial offenders out of business. Usakovs has taken a similarly hard line with taxi cheats, ordering police blitzes on taxi firms, fining them heavily for minor infringements on vehicle maintenance and incomplete documentation. Longer term he says that the city plans to slash the number of licensed taxi drivers, allowing only legitimate firms to ply their trade.
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Revellers walk during the “Go Blonde!” fundraising charity event in Riga May 31, 2009. The event, organised by Latvia’s Blonde Association, aims to get funding to build playgrounds for children with special needs |
But it’s not just foreign tourists that are experiencing the charms of Latvia. The sharp downturn in the economy has put paid to the foreign vacations that many Latvians enjoyed during the boom years. Now cash-strapped Latvians are more likely to holiday at home. “Latvians are rediscovering Latvia as a tourist destination,” says Maris Fogelis, first vice-chairman of Trasta Komercbanka. Local press reports suggest that after years of jetting off to sun themselves on the beaches of Dubai or Sharm El-Sheikh, in the winter of 2009/10 Latvians have been reacquainting themselves with the simpler and less expensive pleasures of ice-fishing and cross-country skiing in their own country. Latvia may have lost the economic plot during its unfettered boom, but it seems in the course of the crisis it has rediscovered itself. Nowhere was that more evident than in the Go Blonde festival of May 2009, when a veritable army of blondes – some natural, some chemically enhanced – took to the streets of Riga in a glorious display of Latvian womanhood designed to shake the country out of its recession-inspired depression and raise money for charitable projects. “The Go Blonde festival was a great, fun idea,” says Gene Zolotarev, chairman of local investment banking boutique Maximus Capital. As Marika Gederte, president of the Latvian Association of Blondes, which organized the event notes: “Last year’s parade, this year’s festival and next year’s carnival have and will make a substantial contribution toward Latvia’s tourism sector. Go Blonde will soon be as important a project for Latvia as the carnivals in Brazil and Italy, which are of great interest to thousands of tourists.” This May’s Marilyn Monroe-themed Blondes Will Shake The World event promises to be bigger and better than ever and has already attracted sponsors from travel, hotel, cosmetics and restaurant groups. Given such eye-catching and commercially successful initiatives it’s hoped that on the economic front it will soon be the entire population and not just the blondinki who will be having more fun.
see also:
Latvia learns from the biggest crash of them all
Selling off a state secret
Madara makes up lost ground
