Nearly 29% of Latvians Cannot Afford a Week-Long Holiday Away from Home
Eurostat data compiled by Citadele bank shows that 28.9% of Latvian residents cannot afford a week-long holiday away from home, though the situation has improved since the early 2000s.
According to Eurostat data published by Citadele bank, 28.9% of Latvian residents cannot afford a week-long holiday away from home. Ginta Zemgale, the bank’s customer experience manager, notes that despite economic growth, travel remains an unaffordable luxury for a significant portion of the population.
However, the situation in the Baltics is gradually improving. Ten years ago, 37.1% of Latvians could not afford a week-long trip. In Estonia, the figure is the lowest in the Baltics at 25.8%, while Lithuania’s provisional indicator is the highest at 30.9%. The EU average last year was 27.5%.
Zemgale adds that in all three Baltic countries, single-parent families and seniors are most often forced to forgo travel. In 2024, Latvian residents made 4.89 million trips, of which 63.3% were domestic and 36.7% were abroad. The average trip length was 3.5 nights, with an average of 2.3 nights spent in Latvia and 5.5 nights abroad.
The majority of tourism spending (83%) goes to foreign trips, similar to Luxembourg, Belgium, Malta, and Cyprus. Latvian residents spent an average of €110 per night abroad and €31 per night domestically. The EU averages are €135 and €78 per night, respectively.
