The Lithuanian State Department of Tourism is happy to announce the opening of the first Lithuanian Tourism Information Office in the United Kingdom. The Director is Indre Trakimaite whose background is in journalism and public relations. Indre has previously worked as Public Relations Advisor to the Minister of Social Security and Labour of Lithuania.
The key purpose of the Centre is to promote the tourism potential of Lithuania and to spread information about the country’s distinctive features. The Centre will deal with travel writers, travel editors and with the travel trade. It would be happy to help journalists and travel writers with commissions to write on Lithuania and in this connection is planning two press trips to Lithuania in 2007.
The first one will be organised in the third week of May. The tour will start in Vilnius, the capital, and will coincide with the annual International Folklore Festival. Then it will be off to the countryside to try all manner of sports, perhaps ballooning, perhaps cycling perhaps swimming, or maybe even all of these. We will make sure you are fully occupied!
The second trip will be organised at the end of August/beginning of September. It will also start in Vilnius, and have a cultural theme, bearing in mind that Vilnius will be the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2009. A contrast will then be provided with a visit to the Curonian Spit, on the Baltic coast, with its erratic sand dunes (Lithuanian Sachara) and small fishing villages..
Also in our plans is the third press trip to spa resorts – Druskininkai ir Birstonas in the middle of October.
So please let us know if you are interested in these tours.
Individual arrangements can also be made where these are more appropriate. The Centre will be happy to organise an individual press tour for all who are interesting in Lithuania and want to write about it.
The number of British visitors to Lithuania keeps growing every year. During the period from January to September 2006, a total of 31,800 tourists from Great Britain were provided with accommodation in Lithuanian hotels and guest-houses, or 23% more than during the same period last year. In 2005, 33,000 guests from Great Britain were accommodated in Lithuania, 44.8 % more than in 2004.
British tourists are mostly interested in cultural tourism (major cities, museums) and business tourism. At the same time, conference tourism and recreational tourism are also becoming more popular. The leisure market divides between those who spend a long weekend in Vilnius and those who spend a week or so in the whole country. We hope that those planning city breaks may well in fact stay longer and that those already planning a serious tour of Lithuania will give it the ten days to two weeks that it really deserves.
Contact details:
Indre Trakimaite
Director
Lithuanian Tourism Information Centre
86 Gloucester Place
London W1U 6HP
Tel.: 020 7034 1222
Mob: 07817 393048
Fax.: 020 7935 4661
