Republic

An addendum to the programme for tourism cooperation between Belarus and Lithuania was signed on May 8 as a delegation of the Belarusian Sports and Tourism Ministry led by Deputy Minister Cheslav Shulga visited Vilnius. A session of the Belarusian-Lithuanian working party for tourism is taking place in Lithuania. A decision has been made to jointly work out an international route “Following the roads of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania”, water routes along the Augustow Canal and the Neman. The sides have also agreed to share experience of using methods of the World Tourism Organisation to calculate the number of tourists and assess tourism influence on a country’s economy. Apart from that, members of the working party have analysed the possibility of opening a Belarusian tourism information centre in Druskininkai. Representatives of Belarus were interested in tendencies and prospects of promoting rural tourism in Lithuania. Cheslav Shulga told BelTA, the Belarusian delegation had been especially interested in Lithuania’s practices used to attract tourists out of season. Lithuania chose the way of building new sanatoriums and developing the existing ones through setting up spas. The out of season tourism practice is supposed to be used in Belarus as well — in Naroch, Braslav and Lepel. Apart from that, it is necessary to more vigorously introduce medical tourism. In 2007 the number of tourists from Belarus to Lithuania increased by 50% in comparison with 2006. According to the Statistics Department of Lithuania, in 2007 over 56,700 Belarusian tourists stayed at hotels, 51.3% up on 2006.