“Supervision of providers of tourism services will be consolidated with other business supervisory operations and will be within the competences of the Economy Ministry. Meanwhile, the operations of the public establishment Lithuania Travel, which will be subordinate to the ministry, will involve promotion of incoming and local tourism,” Sinkevičius said in a press release.
The ministry said that Lithuania Travel, which will start operations starting 2019, will include about the same number of staff as the Tourism Department does. Supervision specialists that will be shifted to the Economy Ministry will be replaced by experts of social media, research and analysis, tourism products and content.
Some 1.58 million foreign tourists visited Lithuania last year and spent at least one night here, which is a rise by 4.3 percent from 2016. Most of the tourists came from Belarus, Germany, Russia, Poland, Latvia and Ukraine.