Will the global transformation of the tourism industry start in Riga?

In Riga, a quiet shift in global tourism may already be underway. As cities search for ways to blend culture, technology and visitor experience, a young startup 3pic.ai based at Startup House Riga believes it has found a way forward: turning smart glasses into personal, human-centered tour guides powered by the voices and expertise of real professionals. A 24-year-old from Yerevan named Gevorg Rashoyan was still selling his family’s seed oil at Riga Food Expo last year. Today he holds a Latvian startup visa, works out of Startup House Riga and has one big dream: to make Riga the first city in the world where anyone can take a walk with a digital tour guide in smart glasses.  

Younger travelers are turning away from traditional guided tours and gravitating toward flexible, tech-enabled, self-guided experiences - a trend accelerated by the rise of AI and the promise of wearable technology. Audio guides, once the default alternative, increasingly fail to hold attention, while museums and tour providers can be slow to adapt, creating friction between what visitors expect and what the industry currently offers. This widening gap is precisely where smart-glasses technology is poised to step in. As adoption grows globally over the next few years, Riga’s compact size, innovative ecosystem and openness to experimentation make it an ideal real-world sandbox for testing next-generation tourism tools. For startups like 3pic.ai, that combination turns Latvia from a small market into a strategic proving ground for global-scale ideas. 

For international founders, Latvia offers structured public support for entering and scaling within the European Union, with pathways toward broader international markets. The Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) is the country’s main public body for attracting foreign investment and supporting startups, while Startin.LV serves as a one-stop platform for startup visas, relocation support and access to the local ecosystem. Together, they function as Latvia’s soft-landing gateway for founders building EU-oriented businesses. 

Your Tour, Your Rules - Anytime, Anywhere 

Gevorg’s company 3pic.ai is building software that turns any smart glasses (RayNeo, Xreal, Viture, etc.) into a personal travel companion. It tells stories, shows routes, recommends hidden gems, translates conversations in real time and even throws in local humor and music. The most important part: these virtual tours are based on the real voice, gestures and personality of actual licensed guides. A guide records their tour once - their jokes, their stories, their style - and that content is digitized. Every time someone buys the virtual tour, the original guide still earns money. 

“We have zero intention of replacing guides,” Gevorg emphasizes. “We want to give them a new way to make additional income and let them reach thousands of travelers who don’t want to stand in a big group.” 

3pic.ai plans to launch its first tours in Riga this year. Soon you’ll see people walking through Old Riga wearing glasses and smiling - because a real Riga guide’s digital twin just told them a joke.  

The company is currently classic bootstrapping: Gevorg and his technical co-founder Hayk Hovhannisyan are living off personal savings. “AI tools are extremely expensive, so we’re actively looking for our first pre-seed round. Tourism isn’t yet as attractive to investors as deep tech, but we believe once they see a demo with a real guide’s digital version, interest will come.” 

Why start in Riga? 

Latvia is increasingly attracting early-stage founders who want a manageable, welcoming gateway into the European market. Despite its size, the country offers a surprisingly mature startup ecosystem, frequent networking events, accessible investors and a uniquely friendly “soft-landing” infrastructure. For Gevorg, this made Latvia not only a practical choice, but a place where building a company felt genuinely possible from day one.  

“Latvia chose me as much as I chose Latvia,” Gevorg admits. Safety, lower living costs than in most European capitals and the Startin.LV “Digital explorers” program were decisive. “Startin.LV was our lifeline - they arranged appointments at the Georgian embassy (there’s no Armenian embassy in Latvia yet), helped with documents that were only in Latvian and set up our first investor meetings.” 

“The road of entrepreneurship is never smooth,” says Gevorg. “There are always bureaucracy and countless technicalities. What made the difference, however, was that LIAA colleagues were helpful, and an exception was made to speed up the visa process.” Gevorg calculates that the first four months in Riga cost one person 5,000-6,000 EUR - rent, deposits, unexpected flights, lawyer fees. “My main advice: budget at least three to six months of living expenses so everything goes without extra headaches.” 

He recommends anyone thinking of starting a business in Riga: “Spend a couple of hours on the LIAA, Startin.LV and PMLP websites - 90 % of the information you need is there. Do it before you arrive and everything will be much calmer.” 

Beyond Language and Labels 

Language barrier? In the business world here in Riga everyone speaks excellent English, but at the Central Market with the older generation sometimes Google Translate or a smile helps.” 

The first months also caused funny misunderstandings. “Many people see an Armenian and immediately think of a shashlik restaurant. We’re already three Armenian tech startups in Latvia in the last year - all three of us are working with AI.” 

“Latvia and Armenia are similar in a beautiful way — we’re both quiet countries with huge potential that we don’t always show loudly to the world. For me, changing that perception is personal: it’s about giving both our countries, and our startup, a stronger voice on the global stage,” he says. 

Next Steps: Scaling Across the Baltics and Beyond 

Although the technology could eventually be deployed anywhere, 3pic.ai is taking a focused, strategic path toward export. Gevorg sees the Baltics as the company’s first natural market: compact, interconnected, culturally rich and increasingly popular with independent travelers. But he also believes the real disruption lies beyond the major capitals. While cities like Paris or Barcelona are already full of organized tours, countless smaller European towns remain overlooked simply because travelers don’t know how to navigate them. Smart-glasses tours could change that, making authentic, lesser-known destinations accessible in a way traditional tourism never has. Technology also has the potential to open urban exploration to travelers who are often excluded from group tours, for instance, wheelchair users who can explore at their own pace, guided entirely through their glasses. With Riga as the testing ground, the next steps are clear: refine the product through real-world use, build a network of licensed guides whose digital tours can travel further than they ever could physically, and use Latvia as the base for a scalable European expansion.