Lithuania will allocate around 10 million euros in 2024 to promote flights to select European cities. The list of destinations deemed important for businesses and inbound tourism includes 27 places, with 23 of them to be reached from Vilnius.
Transport Minister Marius Skuodis says the “priority destinations” include major European hubs, like Dusseldorf and Hamburg in Germany, Madrid in Spain and others.
“Equally, we do not yet have good enough connections with countries like Spain, for example. Madrid is one of the hubs,” Skuodis told reporters at Vilnius Airport on Monday.
According to the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the 27 priority destinations currently include New York, Brussels, Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow and others.
Skuodis says his ministry will allocate 5 million euros and the Economy and Innovation Ministry will allocate 3 million euros for flight incentive schemes next year. Moreover, Vilnius Municipality will contribute up to 20 percent of the total amount.
On Monday, the municipality and the two ministries signed a tripartite agreement on a list of destinations of interest for businesses and inbound tourism and measures to promote flights to and from the Lithuanian capital.
Economy Minister Aušrinė Armonaitė says her ministry will seek to “help to fill the planes with people” and invest in raising Lithuania’s profile.
“This is already being done, and Lithuania is being presented as an inbound market, Vilnius is presented, and this is how people find out about us,” Armonaitė said.
Record flows
Three Lithuanian airports are seeing record passenger flows in October, with the number of serviced passengers expected to exceed 600,000 this month, according to Simonas Bartkus, director general of Lietuvos Oro Uostai (Lithuanian Airports, LTOU) which manages the country’s three international airports.
“In October this year, we expect to exceed the flow of 600,000 passengers passing through Lithuanian airports,” he told reporters at Vilnius Airport on Monday.
According to him, October will be busier in terms of passengers than July or August.
“The record [annual] passenger flow so far was in 2019 and totalled 6.5 million passengers,” he said.
LTOU manages the airports of Vilnius, Kaunas, and Palanga.
Newsletter
Every Friday morning.
