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. 

Just when the years are going to turn our Winter Newsletter is out. 

We wish to all of you successful 2015 and a lots of pleasure enjoying what the tourism can give us.

Merry Christmas and happy New Year!

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

We were glad to read in UK's "Daily Mail" that birch juice is conquering the world as one of the top health drinks. Read here.

Living in the country where there is no shortage of birch trees Latvians has collected and drunk birch sap for centuries. When you drive around Latvia in April, it is a common sight as in the photo here. The hand written signes along the roads that fresh birch sap available for purchase are also common.

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.