Tourism association development tendencies in Latvia

Abstract

Tourism as one of the leading industries has gained attention from scholars that are researching different influencing factors of tourism destination development. One of the challenges that tourism destinations need to overcome is heterogeneous nature of tourism industry that could be solved with the help of professional and regional tourism associations. Current tourism technology from one side creates additional potential for tourism enterprises and destinations, from other side it could decrease need for traditional tourism associations. The Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) indicates eighteen active tourism associations in Latvia. These tourism associations have been going through different development stages in Latvia, first ones started their activities already straight in time of struggle for independence and are actively functioning even now after 28 years of intensive involvement in industry development. On the other hand some of tourism associations have hardly surviving and are forced to bootstrap. Research aims to analyse different stages of tourism association development and draw conclusions on development strategies applied by tourism association in Latvia. Research method will comprise in-depth interviews with tourism association management during the years of 2018 and 2019. Research findings show a variety of development strategies applied both by professional tourism associations as well as regional associations. Conclusions indicate most successful tourism association management model, evaluation of current development stage of tourism associations in Latvia and evaluation of future development potential.