The Lithuanian State Department of Tourism has opened its first 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 tourism opportunities of Lithuania, spread information about country’s distinction. 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 interesting 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.

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 accommodation in Lithuanian accommodation establishments, 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.
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