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Since 1990-ies there has been an active development of rural tourism in Latvia: in 1994 there were 20 farmhouses - members of the Latvian Country Tourism Association “Lauku ceļotājs” (Country Traveller). With the growth of demand, the number of farms engaged in tourism has been increasing (at the end of 2009, there were 116 farmhouses registered in the Latvian Country Tourism Association with 3715 bed places. But according to the information provided by the local and regional tourism offices, there were ~ 700 different accommodation establishments in rural areas of Latvia in 2009.
In 2000, the Ministry of Agriculture started to manage resources allocated by the EU through the SAPARD program. The Ministry supervised the program of agricultural subsidies in 2002 providing them to rural tourism businesses targeted at their infrastructure development; Support was available from the National Entrepreneurship Fund. The new programme cycle continues support to rural tourism as part of the actions of “The Development of Tourism Activities” of the Rural Development Programme 2007 – 2013. Thanks to the EU and national support programmes, quantity and quality of rural tourism products is significantly increasing, a great variety of new rural tourist products are being provided. The Internet is becoming the key marketing and sales channel both for domestic and foreign tourism.
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1.3.3. Latvia | Definition and Mission |
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