Year 2015, Location: Croatia, Greece, Latvia and Poland.
12 educational institutions, seven national tourism associations, over 250 travel agencies, over 300 employees of travel agencies and more than 600 pupils and students to connect and move towards a common goal of sustainable tourism development in the EU. The project is implemented training programs and certificates acquired over 500 students, over 200 staff travel agencies and implementation processes društvano responsibility and Travelife certification is followed over 50 travel agencies in Croatia, Greece, Poland and Latvia.

Press Release

The main prize is a holiday voucher of  EUR 300 in the Baltic States. You could use your voucher buying any Baltic Country Holidays products found on our website www.countryholidays.lv.

Eight participants will receive one of the vouchers for the stay or discounts at the Latvian manors, country hotels, spas or self-catering cottages. 

All winners will receive useful Baltic Country Holidays' tourism publications – guidebooks and maps.

The winner will be announced on the 11th of May, 2015 and published on our website www.countryholidays.lv, Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as informed by e-mail.
 
Fill in the questionnaire and participate in the lottery: http://serv.celotajs.lv/qst/en

Our new cycling map includes 9 cycling routes, 240 tourism objects, how to travel to and around the Baltic States.
This cycling map contains brief descriptions of 9 cycling routes withing the three Baltic States as well as descriptions of 240 tourism objects found along the
cycling routes. There are also marked local cafes and pubs in the map, where we recommend to have a meal. Several routes or their separate sections can be combined
together. The Baltic landscape is gentle rolling hills.None of the featured routes are particularly difficult and most routes are suitable for beginners.

More detailed route descriptions are available at www.tours.countryholidays.lv

Electronic version: English / German

This year Latvia is a partner country of “International Green Week” which takes place from 16-25th January, 2015 in Berlin. Latvia's stand is planned as a rural homestead with demonstrations of produce from gardens, meadows, the Baltic Sea as well as representation of rural tourism. Food tastings, demonstrations, and various activities will take place during the fair. Tourism of Latvia will be representing by Latvian Rural tourism association “Lauku celotajs” and Latvian National airline AirBaltic. 

Latvian culinary traditions have absorbed influences from both East and the West. The cuisine is distinctly seasonal with a strong emphasis on wild food. Spring brings birch juice, the Summer Solstice brings caraway seed cheese and beer. In Autumn, mushroom hunting and cranberry gathering becomes a national obsession while Winter is the time of smoked meat and fish, warming soups and bacon filled pīrāgi. For the simplest of snacks, just smear hemp butter and honey on a slice of rye bread!
Latvians are hospitable, and they will bring gifts when they come visiting and always give you one for the road when you’re leaving.

Culinary map of Latvia

Latvian Foods and Beverages

From 3th till 6th of December in a new Erasmus + project: ''FairTourism - CSR in Rural Tourism – Guidelines and Training Programme developed in HEI Business Cooperationkick''  kick off meeting was held in Riga, Latvia.

On the 2nd and 3rd of October, the “PESTO” conference took place in Graz (Austria) and the project TransCSR (Transparency of CSR skills through ECVET in European tourism) was presented by the lead applicant kate. 
PESTO stands for Promotion and networking of EU projects on sustainable tourism. The conference had been organized by the network E.N.T.E.R, which aims at transferring and exploiting EU Project Results. 

Together with European partners we have started a new EU project. The aim is to research and analyse senior travellers' market, to establish their needs and wishes and to make realistic and practical products based on the findings. The idea is also to incourage international cooperation between product providers and senior organization in order to introduce established products into market.

Go Rural is a manual of rural tourism in Latvia for tourists as well as travel professionals.

In this brochure we try to show Latvia through its best products and people who produce and grow them. We bring out rural feeling and places where you could go and relax as if visiting your grandma in the countryside. Fruits and vegetables in the gardens are available for your own picking.

Several tours are ideal for families with children. During these tours children can see and learn from where the food is coming, feed and pat some farm animals and enjoy nature.

In our tours we bring out the typical Latvian taste providing various tasting opportunities at the farms, country houses, local pubs and restaurants. We have several food and drink tours for groups. There are also crafts tours which allows to learn some useful skills.

Using our many years' experience we also organize professional agro tours and provide consultation about rural tourism.

See electronic version here.

''Lauku ceļotājs'' have created a handbook and online training platform for rural tourism businesses - „Your Rural Tourism Business - Run it Smart”.