Two new hotels are being opened in the capital in a space of one month. The old-time hotels are not worried about the competition though, because the number of hotel spaces in Lithuania is still substantially smaller than in Europe, delfi.lt reported on 24 August referring to “LNK Žinios”.
According to the hotel association, even a larger number of hotels could appear in Lithuania, however that is hindered by the incoherent decisions of the government.
“I alone personally know about four major projects which would gladly come and start building. But they are still waiting for the stabilisation of tax base, because leaps of VAT from 9 to 21 percent stop any investor from acting”, – said Lithuania’s Hotel and Restaurant Association president Evalda Šiškauskienė.
Hotels are also complaining about Lithuania being hard to reach from the main European airports. There are also no airlines flying to Lithuania that are suitable for business clients. The country is also not well-known.
“The arriving guests always say, ‘Yes, Riga, we know Riga well, yes Talin, Talin is in the second place, and Vilnius is somewhere near there.’ We need the help of responsible institutions in this area,” said Kęstutis Kazlauskas, director of a hotel.
According to the tourism department, two new hotels in Vilnius will be useful, because starting this Autumn, part of Ryanair flights will be relocated to the capital.
“Out of fourteen possible destinations, only 4 to 5 of them will be connected to Kaunas. This, of course, is a sad statistic for the next year; however, there is a large number of tourists, especially ones in the economy class, that would flock in to Vilnius,” notes Raimonda Balnienė, the head of the tourism department.
New hotels are promising to not only reel-in part of the clientele from the old hotels, but also attract new ones.
“Competition should be essentially seen as market expansion, and the attraction of new clients. We will also offer a new segment, which does not yet exist in Vilnius – leisure, SPA, and a segment for high-level business clients. I am positive that this market will be able to expand with new hotels in the future,” said Noel Attard, the director of a new hotel.
Last year Lithuania had the second-fastest growing stream of tourism: in the first half of this year, tourism has grown by 12 percent – twice as fast compared to Latvia and Estonia.
