RIGA — The “Live Riga” campaign is moving ahead despite nagging concerns from anti-corruption organizations about it’s legitimacy.

The Riga Tourism Development Bureau, now officially in charge of promoting the city, was finally registered Wednesday with the Register of Enterprises of Latvia by its founders.

The bureau has been working on projects since summer this year, though. The group is comprised of the Riga City Council, national airline airBaltic, the Latvian Hotel and Restaurant Association, and the Latvian Travel Agents’ Association.

The bureau founders will convene for their first official meeting on Nov. 2. On this occasion they plan to approve the Riga tourism promotion marketing plan, which has already had money pumped into it, its budget and the creative idea for the first tourism communication campaign abroad, a campaign already publicized by the bureau already over a month ago.

It has also officially revealed now that the bureau will be managed by a board which includes politicians from Riga deputy mayor Ainars Šlesers’ party LPP/LC and and Nils Ušakovs’ party Harmony Center as well as airBaltic CEO Bertolt Flick. Flick told Baltic Reports that he would be in charge of the bureau.

“There is a board and I will be chairman of the board,” Flick said.

The administration costs will kept under 5 percent of the total budget for this and the coming year — 6 million lats (€8.4 million).

The bureau was using money from both airBaltic and the Riga City Council before getting approval from the council earlier this month and before registering the business, Flick confirmed.

“Since we have cooperation with the city on this and knowing how long it takes in a city environment, we started this process already in June and we selected a company to sort out the brand and communication strategy and this was paid for by airBaltic. Otherwise we would have started this process yesterday and it would have taken longer,” Flick said on Oct. 21, the day after the company was approved by Riga City Council.

When asked whether taxpayer money had been used before getting council approval, Flick denied the claim. AirBaltic is a partially state owned entity and the Riga City Council is funded by tax payers.

“We are not using any taxpayer money. Quite the contrary, we are combining our (airBaltic’s) marketing budget with the budget that is set aside by the city for the promotion of the city, so we are not using any tax payer money. We are combining forces to get a meaningful campaign together,” he said.

Question marks

According to Delna, the Latvian branch of the non-governmental organization Transparency International, registering the Riga Tourism Development Bureau as a foundation is a dubious choice.

“It is contrary to the organizations and foundations law, which stipulates that foundations are made to promote civil society development. Also, by giving foundation as a legal entity funds, probably 6 million lats, Riga City Council will in fact lose control over the use of this money,” Delna said in a written statement.

At the same time a document containing information on the competition for the Riga promotion project has been leaked to Latvian press. Instructions for how the project should look like reveal that it is not exclusively about Riga city.

The campaign will also promote airBaltic as the first choice  regional airline and show Riga City Council as a business minded, dynamic, effective, experienced and highly professional team.

The document describes the business objectives that must be reached by the end of 2010. Two of them — to increase number of business travelers to Riga by 15-20 percent and attract 100-200 international conferences with at least 200,000 visitors yearly — are almost identical to an earlier project Inspiration Riga goals.

Inspiration Riga was also managed by Flick, though it failed to organize the planned events. The Ministry of Economy sued Inspiration Riga to get back the allocated funds, and the court case is still unfinished. airBaltic has so far not commented on the leaked document.

Flick’s latest comment regarding the project stresses the urgency of the situation.

“It is important for us that a professional marketing campaign for attraction of tourists is commenced already this year when the Latvian tourism industry experiences considerable decline. The whole travel industry will benefit from successful campaign.”

The newly established bureau has funds of 1 million lats (€1.4 million ) to spend already this year.

— Baltic Reports Assistant Editor Adam Mullett contributed in the writing of this article