Tartu is inviting its neighbours

In recent years, Tartu has been trying to remind its closest neighbours of its existence and introduce itself to them.

So far the tourists who have visited Tartu have been mostly from Finland, less from Germany and Sweden. Recently, Tartu has done a lot of marketing among its closest neighbours, Latvia and Russia. As a result, Latvian and Russian tourists have overtaken Sweden in the top list of the nations that visit Tartu.

According to the statistics, there were twice as many Russian tourists staying in Tartu in the first month of 2010 than there were in January last year. Deputy Mayor Karin Jaanson, who is responsible for the tourism sector, said that tourists from Russia even outnumbered the Finnish tourists. „The figures clearly indicate that our marketing activity in Russia has borne fruit", said Karin Jaanson happily. Tartu has been carrying out active and purposeful marketing activities aimed at Russia for four years now, by inviting travel agents and journalists to visit Tartu and by promoting the city in the streets of St. Petersburg. Russians have been invited to Tartu within the framework of special programmes in cooperation with private companies, mostly around New Year's Eve and Midsummer night. It is not a coincidence that tourists are encouraged to visit Tartu during the periods outside tourism season.

Promotion activities are also carried out in the direction of the other close neighbour, Latvia. Last summer,Tartu carried out an exten- sive marketing campaign to encourage Latvians to visit Tartu and stay overnight. A very important factor in tourism is definitely the convenience of getting to the destination. Tartu has benefited much from the opening of scheduled flights from the Tartu Airport.

Direct connection with Stockholm and Riga has proven to be necessary as more flights have been added in the schedule. Tartu has also been working on the opening of several bus and train lines that would create a better connection with its closest neighbours.

Despite the economic recession, people still need a change from familiar surroundings and this is why they take shorter trips to their neighbouring countries. Economic recession gives us the opportunity to discover the places that are closer to home, often cheaper and it takes less time to get there. And the quality of the trip may not be poorer than that of the trips to faraway places.