The version of latvia.travel unveiled this week.
RIGA — Would you pay €30,000 for a website with just pictures, text and links?
The Latvian Tourism Development Agency unveiled it’s new website latvia.travel this week, and while the site is visually impressive the Latvian press is already questioning its 20,000 lats (€28,200) price tag, also noting its similarity to www.visitestonia.com and questioning the odd domain name.
That’s not the total cost either, as currently only one-third of the total content is up. Versions of the website in foreign languages have not been created yet. Eventually the project will cost 60,000 lats (€84,000), being completed by freelance web designers.
The agency said its current website www.latviatourism.lv/ was “outdated visually.”
Agency director Armands Slokenbergs said the new website’s layout was designed with the country’s new tourism slogan “best enjoyed slowly” in mind, with photographs of places in Latvia that bring to mind rest and beauty.
“It accentuates nature and cultural tourism, showing details and emotion-provoking photographs encouraging travelers to remain in the country to explore outside Riga,” Slokenbergs said in a statement to the press.
The agency is a state institution supervised by the economy ministry.
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I spent two months living in Latvija during the (northern) summer of 2008, based in Riga but travelling with some friends to different regions, cities and towns for much of that time. In effect I did exactly as Latvia’s new tourism slogan suggested, and it’s entirely justified. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and I only got to see about half of the country, I found it to be so fascinating and absorbing. Actually, Latvija is the only nation I have visited outside of my home country Australia. I hope to return again – and my thoughts and best wishes are with Latvija as this tough little nation perseveres through yet another period of hardship. Uz tiksanos!
Well, it could be worse. On July 14 France launched france.fr – a similar site to this Latvian one. It went down a few hours after the launch, has been down ever since and they hope to figure it out in the second half of August.
I dont know how much Frenchmen paid for theirs, but I’m sure it was a lot more :)