Lithuania is strengthening its policies at national and regional levels to maintain its vigour and continue to drive tourism development. This is despite the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, with a spillover effect to most neighbouring tourism markets, and the uncertain global economic situation.
In June 2024, Lithuania adopted a National Tourism Pathway 2030, a collaborative effort between the public and private sector to develop Lithuania’s tourism economy until 2030. The aim is to increase the tourism sector’s competitiveness and pursue the objectives set out in the National Progress Plan. The main goals are to accelerate the transformation of the tourism sector and develop tourism infrastructure and marketing tools. The Pathway also aims to address issues related to connectivity and accessibility, the country’s image as a tourist destination, skills for the tourism workforce, tourism infrastructure investment and the quality of tourism services through innovation and digitalisation.
The National Tourism Information System aims to better connect tourists and service providers in a one‑stop shop as well as collect data for public and private sector use. This system will be automated, gathering data from natural objects, landmarks, cultural heritage sites and tourism services and will incorporate mobile phone data. The information will be visible and accessible on the Lithuania travel website, allowing users to create personal touristic routes or making travel packages for tour operators. By reducing the administrative burden on service providers, the website aims to promote a more transparent hospitality sector that employs data driven decision making to produce more sustainable tourism services in regions and prolong tourist stays. Ultimately this will increase tourism’s contribution to the Lithuanian economy.
Lithuania is also expanding the Tourism Data Dashboard to monitor the tourism sector. The Dashboard shows publicly available and systematised accommodation, employment and balance of payments data as well as import and export data provided by Statistics Lithuania, linked to the Travel Tech Sandbox.
The Dashboard also features statistical indicators describing the mobility patterns of foreign travellers visiting Lithuania, based on passive mobile positioning data. The indicators are calculated and analysed to improve the travel experience of tourists, to promote investments in local businesses creating new tourism services or products as well as to improve the current tourism infrastructure, and to optimise the efficiency of Lithuania Travel’s operations. Mobile data can cover all foreign visitors, not just those using tourist accommodation, which provides a comprehensive overview for decision-makers. Interpreting this data requires basic knowledge of mobile data principles and comes with challenges such as accuracy issues, limited granularity, and high costs. The trial data was based on one mobile network operator’s data from the period of May to October 2021 and April to August 2022. The next stage was to provide a continuous full-year data timeline from September 2022 to August 2023. The project is carried out by the national tourism development agency Lithuania Travel in collaboration with multiple telephone companies.
Lithuania has also passed law amendments to better support the tourism sector. These include the Law on Sustainable Resorts and Resort Territories (see box below) and the Law on State Debt to help tourism providers access and afford insurance. The amendments to this law stipulate that the guarantor institution may provide guarantees to cover part of the insurance or guarantee benefit paid by the insurance company under a suretyship insurance contract or by a financial institution under a granted financial guarantee to the tour operator established in the Republic of Lithuania.
Tools are also being developed to help the tourism sector. The E-business model tool will support tourism providers with e-business solutions, while the Retraining of Enterprise Workers tool and the Innovative Checks tool will finance the purchase of publishing, voice-reading, translation, photography, filming, design and communication services for tourism companies.
