ESTLAT Harbours

The coastline of Latvia and Estonia forms a joint sea basin and jointly it forms one of the four main destinations in the Baltic sea for sailors – East Baltic. There are excellent preconditions for benefitting from maritime travel and developing tourism since the coastline and islands carry unique cultural and natural heritage, clean nature, and safe conditions in the destination.

The project objective was to improve sailing infrastructure and build a network of harbors in Estonia and Latvia to promote East Baltic as a sailing destination:

Improved services of harbors in Estonia and Latvia are aimed to create standardized and harmonized service levels in harbors along the coastline of Latvia and Estonia (altogether 20 small harbors), which includes safe navigation conditions into harbors, secure environment, and good quality level services in the harbor, easy to access and understand information – while planning the trip, as well during the sailing holiday.
The network of harbors in Estonia and Latvia is the precondition to connect Latvia and Estonia to international maritime routes. Network building is done by adding density and fulfilling the gaps with the harbors, so the network becomes functional and can provide harbors within one-day sailing. Network building does not limit only with the harbors in Latvia and in Estonia, it should also provide the pre-defined and easy to access routes to/from main target markets (Rostock – Tallinn; St.Peterburg - Helsinki - Klaipeda and give way-points to reach our regions in a safe, well-marked and correctly described way on sea map.
Promotion and marketing of Latvia and Estonia as a sailing destination. Latvia and Estonia cover the East Baltic coast and is a joint destination for sailors and marketing activities will focus on creating trust and raising awareness and explaining that it is a safe and entertaining region to visit.

The project contributes to the implementation of the EUSBSR policy area "Tourism - Reinforcing cohesiveness of the macro-region through tourism" and the achievement of the EUSBSR objective "Connect the region"