Baltic Visitor

From today, passengers flying with a range of airlines – including Estonian Air, Czech Airlines, easyJet, SAS and others – will be required to check in at the new southern extension of Tallinn Airport. The extension includes nine new gates and will allow the airport to handle 2.3 million passengers per year, twice as many [...]

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The new Nordic Hotel Forum opens on Viru Square this Sunday, offering yet another accommodation option in the Estonian capital. It has 267 rooms including 8 suites, and apparently cost over 22 million Euro to outfit.
The hotel’s website raises more questions than it answers, including ‘what on earth is the “mysterious tree of dreams” which [...]

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Tallinn airport has announced a drop of almost 10% in the landing taxes which it charges to airlines, effective from March 2008. It is as yet unclear whether these savings will be passed on to customers, although one side effect may be to make Tallinn more appealing to Ryanair.
The low cost airline had refused to [...]

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Earlier in 2007 the Estonian Ministry for Economy and Communications said that Ryanair would be flying to their nation’s capital by the autumn. There’s still no sign of the aggressive price-cutting carrier in Tallinn, but the Baltic Times reports that representatives of the ministry held talks with the airline on 12 October, and there are [...]

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[ 12 October, 2007 to 21 October, 2007. ] One of the first festivals to be established in the newly independent Estonia, the Nyyd New Music Festival has been running since 1991. As the name suggests, it specialises in presenting new works by composers from around the world. According to creative director (and composer) Erki-Sven Tuur, quoted on Bonjour L’Estonie, the idea has always [...]

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Estonian police have confirmed that this year’s Gay Pride march will be allowed to take place in central Tallinn on 11th August. There had been concerns earlier in July regarding the route, with the police concerned about the safety of participants following violence from homophobic protesters last year.
The route has been changed slightly, although organiser [...]

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A Baltic Times article on tourism in Tallinn paints a fairly grim picture of an industry which has expanded too fast and cannot fill hotel rooms or attract enough staff. This year has seen a fall in tourist numbers and a drop in the average number of nights for which visitors stay – at [...]

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[ 4 July, 2007 to 8 July, 2007. ] The annual Ollesummer (Beer Summer) festival has been running in Tallinn since 1996, and has grown to the extent that it now fills up the entire Song Festival Grounds. This year the event – running from 4th-8th July – will include more than ten entertainment stages, along with beer tents and food stalls. The biggest [...]

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Stag parties visiting the Baltics have been getting a bad press recently, so it was interesting to read a recent article in the Times which suggested that…well…it isn’t all that bad really. The writer dived headfirst into the stag experience with beer, dubious food and ‘medieval lesbian strippers’ (weren’t they minor characters in the Canterbury [...]

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The Baltic Times has posted an entertaining piece by Joel Alas, who went out in Tallinn on June 5th – the Tuesday night that the new smoking ban was introduced. The journalist finds many of the city’s bars empty, with everyone outside on the pavement instead. He finds himself less than impressed by the atmosphere [...]

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