Vilnius
Tourism

According to Lithuanian Department of Statistics, 1,200,858 visitors rented rooms in Vilnius in 2018 and spent a total of 2,212,109 nights there; this was a respective increase of 12 percent and 11 percent over the previous year. Eighty-one percent of the visitors were foreigners (970,577), 11 percent more than in 2017. Most foreign visitors (47 percent) came from Belarus (102,915), Germany (101,999), Poland (99,386), Russia (90,388) and Latvia (61,829). Nineteen percent of the guests were Lithuanian, 18 percent more than in 2017.

A 2018 Vilnius visitor survey reported that 48 percent were visiting the city for the first time, 85 percent of tourists planned the trip by themselves, and 15 percent used a travel agency. Forty percent said that they visited Vilnius to learn about the city's history and heritage, with 23 percent also planning trips to other parts of Lithuania. Many Belarusians (about 200,000 travel visas annually) visit the city's shopping malls and submit half-meter-long receipts to customs officials.

Vilnius' Tourist Information Centres were visited by 119,136 visitors in 2018 (95,932 foreigners and 23,204 Lithuanians), a five-percent increase over 2017. The city's highest-rated tourist services are restaurants (cafés), old-town attractions, hotels or other accommodations, trips to Trakai, parks and other green zones, connections to Vilnius Airport, and food in hotels, restaurants and cafés. Vilnius is one of a few European capitals which allows hot air ballooning through the city, with nearly 1,000 trips in 2022. In the City Costs Barometer 2019, Vilnius was ranked number one of European capitals for offering the best value to visitors. The controversial Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports, built by Soviet authorities on the site of a Jewish graveyard, was scheduled to become the leading convention center in the Baltic states in 2022.
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