Selling mushroom-hunting travel packages
The things competition will do to hotels.
Given competition, Baltic hotels have had to come up with new ideas to win over tourists. Pedase Hotel in Harju County will send you mushroom picking for 35 euros (and we assume you get to keep the mushrooms you find). Pedase manager Vahur Schmidt admits that this year people have not shown great interest in the mushroom offer, suggesting consumers probably know that there are not many mushrooms in the forests this year due to the dry summer. (Local reports are the opposite: the forests are full of mushrooms.)
Or it could be that travelers realize they could buy a plastic bucket and bus ticket for far less than 35 euros? Ants Järvmägi, head of the Nakatu tourism farmstead in Southern Estonia, seems inclined to agree. He finds a mushroom-hunting package amusing. Järvmägi says people don't need travel packages to hunt mushrooms—his guests can do it anytime they like.