Agnese Sturmane, Commercial Counsellor of the Embassy of the Republic of Latvia in China: Expecting Tourists to Return to Picturesque Riga After the Pandemic

Recently, Agnese Sturmane, Commercial Counsellor of the Embassy of the Republic of Latvia in China received an interview from WTCF. Agnese shared the measures and experience of Latvia in combating COVID-19 and introduced the rich history and unique artistic atmosphere of Riga, a member city of WTCF.

Release time : 2021-01-18 09:56:07

source : WTCF

The year 2020 witnessed a sudden outbreak of COVID-19 which has swept around the world. Many countries introduced travelling restriction policies, leading to a standstill of the cross-border travel market. At this critical moment, the World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF), as the world's first international tourism organization focusing on cities, strives to facilitate the exchanges and communications with its members and innovate in promotion forms by utilizing the mode integrating "online" form with "offline" form, thus building a new platform for its city members.

Recently, Agnese Sturmane, Commercial Counsellor of the Embassy of the Republic of Latvia in China received an interview from WTCF. Agnese shared the measures and experience of Latvia in combating COVID-19 and introduced the rich history and unique artistic atmosphere of Riga, a member city of WTCF. She hoped that, by further leveraging the power of the international tourism organizations, Latvia can strengthen exchanges and mutual understanding with other countries, so as to promote the recovery of the global travel industry after the pandemic.

Agnese Sturmane, Commercial Counsellor of the Embassy of the Republic of Latvia in China

WTCF: The whole world this year is affected by the pandemic severely. What measures have Latvia taken to combat the pandemic and reduce the industry losses?

Agnese Sturmane: In the first pandemic wave in Europe during the spring, Latvia didn't suffer that badly, because we were very efficient with closing our borders and established a national emergency situation. So, it's actually very safe to travel back to Latvia until October and November of 2020. According to the OECD, we actually rank No.2 around the world as in how we are dealing with our pandemic. However, unfortunately, as the second wave was coming in Europe, Latvia started to experience the first wave. Since November 9, 2020, we've also established the second national