Latvia’s Culture and Business Environment

There are many cultures to be found in the human family. There are also many ways to interpret the meaning of a term culture, but some similar characteristics may be found in each definition. Mole (2001:184) explains culture as a shared indoctrination of the mind. He also defines the culture as ‘the methods society evolves to solve problems’. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (2015:8) are backing him up on this statement, formulating theirs as ‘the way in which a group of people solves problems and reconciles dilemmas’. Emphasizing on these statements the author may rise a question about the common problems that appear when a company faces a new culture. Difficult situations may occur when a company with its set of values and norms wants to penetrate a new market that has its ties to a local or a specific culture. Many companies had failed to adapt, clinging to the experiences in the past, they misjudge the value of adaptation to the local tastes. A good example is Domino’s Pizza in Australia (Bell and Shelman, 2011). World-wide industries, including, hotels and food, hire a lot of employees that are not coming from the local culture and they might receive only a slight information on local customs, practices, laws and/or training in local language (Elashmawi et al., 1998). This might cause a serious situation while trying to enter a local market due to a possible amount of misunderstandings that may occur. Very often, in a dialogue, the questioner may hit a basic assumption, but for another person this may be unquestioned reality, this means that the further conversation may be taken for granted (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner 2015).

In this essay author is highlighting Latvia: as culture destination of choice, its hospitality and tourism business environment. The importance is given to the overview of demand and supply of hospitality services with up-to-date statistics on accommodation supply with numbers extracted from various market overviews and central statistics bureau. The key cultural elements of business management are presented with an emphasis on communication, etiquette and work-life balance. After critical data analysis, the comment will be made whether Latvia is a favourable place for foreign companies to expand their operations there.

Hospitality supply and demand in Latvia

The development of hospitality sector in Latvia goes hand to hand with the economy growth. The Eurostat (2017) database states that the turnover is hospitality sector in Latvia was slowly rising before it accelerated in 2003 until 2009 when it was hit hard by the world financial crisis. The advantage of the accommodation sector is that there are a number of international visitors which provide larger markets to compete for (Ernst & Young, 2013).

Colliers international (2016) are mentioning in their report for the 3rd quarter of 2015 that Latvia, had 247 hotels of which only half were certified.