The main challenges for Lithuanian tourism include diversifying the offer, protecting important cultural and natural heritage, improving transport connectivity, and encouraging the uptake of digital technologies. Other priorities include improving tourism education and skills, extending the season, and improving the overall quality and sustainability of the offer.
The Lithuanian Tourism Development Programme 2014-20 set out national tourism development objectives, goals and development priorities, and is supported by the Strategy for Tourism Marketing 2016-20. The strategic objective is to increase the competitiveness of the tourism sector via new product development, and improvements to tourism infrastructure and quality of service. Under the Programme, four priority tourism products were identified for development: cultural, business, health and green (eco) tourism, in priority regions for tourism development. These priorities are aligned to EU Structural Fund support.
The Ministry of the Economy and Innovation is working closely with other relevant ministries to implement the Programme, including the ministries of Culture, Transport and Communications, Health, Foreign Affairs, Agriculture, and Environment as well as the Health Resort Science and Research Centre, municipalities and the private sector. Particular attention has been paid to cultural tourism, with significant investment made to support the renovation of museums, churches and other iconic places. Investment in business tourism has resulted in Vilnius becoming the host city of the Baltic Sea region’s leading annual trade show for the meeting and event industry, CONVENE. The research of natural resources has also been progressed in close co-operation with the Council of Science, while educational hiking trails and observation towers have been built to support green tourism.
A new long term Strategy for Tourism to cover the period from 2021-2031 is now in development, and will aim to tackle and prioritise key forward-looking issues, namely:
Developing public and private tourism infrastructure.
Creating and developing attractive tourism routes.
Improving Lithuania’s accessibility.
Increasing qualifications and improving entrepreneurial skills.
Developing certification and accreditation schemes for services providers.
Developing the information database holding details of Lithuania’s tourism product.
Co-operating with neighbouring countries to implement joint marketing activity.
Creating tourism clusters to deliver joint public and private tourism marketing projects.
Increasing the supply of shoulder and off-season cultural events and attractions.
Growing innovation, rapid modernisation and many emerging challenges for the development of tourism require highly qualified workforce. To this end, further investment is prioritised to develop the required skills, including improved language, sales and marketing skills, professionalism and intercultural competence.
Particular efforts are needed to increase the competitiveness of rural tourism, as the development of specialised rural tourism services represent a major challenge. Small scale rural tourism appears of little interest to most tour operators and travel agencies, but it has great potential for Lithuania. In order to promote exports of rural tourism and green ecotourism services, the Government is focused on supporting and improving the existing online rural tourism promotion channels in international markets and introducing operator sales training. As more niche tourism products arrive into the market, special attention will be given to supporting areas such as gastronomy, bird watching and tourism of nuclear energy sites.
As part of efforts to identify the most effective ways to increase the competitiveness of the tourism sector, and prepare sustainable tourism development guidelines, Lithuania is working with neighbouring countries in the Baltic Sea Region to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals as they apply to tourism (see box).
