Drone fears empty Latvia’s Blue Lakes tourist season

At Birdwhistles Guesthouse in Latvia’s Land of Blue Lakes, all eight rooms sat empty at the height of the summer season, a sight owner Martins Kiscenko said almost never happens. Two wedding parties canceled at the last minute because guests feared being sent to shelter during a drone alert, turning a quiet stretch of forested lakeside into a case study in how war anxiety can hollow out a holiday economy.

The damage reaches far beyond one guesthouse in Rēzekne. About 500 small businesses in the region depend on tourism, and a survey by the Latgale Tourism Association found that 85% of tourism businesses had already lost bookings because of drone fears. Fishing trips, birdwatching weekends, hiking breaks and cabin stays have been especially vulnerable, not because the region is under direct attack, but because repeated airspace incidents have made calm itself feel uncertain.

Latvia’s Ministry of Defense said on May 7 that air-surveillance radars detected unmanned aerial vehicles entering Latvian airspace from Russia, with two crashing inside the country and a third crossing through and exiting. The State Fire and Rescue Service sent cell-broadcast alerts to Ludza and Balvi, then extended them to Rēzekne, as authorities treated the incident as a real public-safety threat. Latvian officials later said four empty oil storage tanks in Rēzekne were damaged by external impact and that a small fire was quickly extinguished.

The foreign ministry summoned Russia’s chargé d’affaires the same day to protest the incident, and police transferred the criminal case to the State Security Service. Latvian authorities have said the drones that entered Baltic airspace were likely diverted by Russian signal jamming rather than intentionally aimed at Latvia, but that explanation has done little to calm the tourism market. Even without casualties, each alert has reinforced the sense that the eastern border is no longer psychologically separate from the war next door.

The Latgale Tourism Association said on May 25 that the sector was facing its most severe crisis since the Covid pandemic and called for urgent government action after security incidents sharply reduced tourist flows. Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs has said he planned to spend his summer vacation in the region as a gesture of reassurance, but local businesses are already counting the cost. In eastern Latvia, the war’s reach is being measured not in explosions, but in canceled weddings, vacant rooms and a summer season that has failed to start.