Scholarly record

RURAL TOURISM MARKET ACTIVITIES IN BALTIC SEA COUNTRIES TOWARD JAPANESE MARKET

Zane Vitolina, G. Grinberga-Zalite, B. Rivza, L. Sudakova

Abstract

Japanese tourists are increasingly more interested and travel around the Baltic Sea countries including Latvia, Estonia and Finland. Compared to Central Europe and West Europe, the Baltic Sea region is safer and offers varied tourism opportunities. High potential exists in the Japanese market for Latvia, Estonia and Finland, but exploitation requires development, redesign/adaptation and promotion of suitable products which take account of Japanese customs, culture, language and expectations. The challenges on the international level are: 1) to raise SME awareness of Japanese market requirements and develop products to suit these; 2) to create awareness of Estonia, Latvia, and Finland products with Japanese tourism operators and tourism agencies. This research focuses on the first challenge – is the rural tourism companies ready to receive visitors from Japan. The aim of the research – to investigate the readiness of rural tourism providers in Latvia, Estonia and Finland to focus on Japanese tourist. To achieve the aim, the fallowing methods are used: monographic, analysis and synthesis, statistical data calculations and the survey.

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