A Baltic tourism office focused on increasing travel to Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania has been opened in Berlin, Germany, the Latvian Foreign Ministry has announced.

The office of Baltikum Tourismus Zentrale is located at Katharinenstrasse 19 in Berlin and is headed by Anda Šilde.

Tourists from Germany last year totaled 197,000, or 8 percent of all tourists, according to the State Tourism Development Agency. That puts Germans in third place among all tourists to Latvia. German tourists last year spent LVL 19 million in Latvia.

The Baltic tourism office also operates a Web site, www.baltikuminfo.de.