Finland Times

Finnish tourism industry has showed a robust growth in the just-ended year as more tourists and holidaymakers landed and stayed overnight in the Nordic country broadening further the tour operators’ smiles, officials said.

Some 5.8 million out of over 6 billion travelers from across the globe made their overnight stays in Finland to enjoy exquisiteness of northern lights around the Arctic Circle beside ice skiing and fishing, sailing, cruising on the Baltic Sea among many other attractions.

“We are satisfied with last year’s figures of travelers’ overnight stay,” Finland Tourism Board researcher and analyst Katarina Wakonen told Finland Times on Wednesday giving the estimate of last year’s figure of 5.8 million compared to 5.5 million in 2011.

“This is also a new record for the Finnish tourism industry” she said, adding more than half of the tourists are from Russia. Holidaymakers from Sweden, Germany and the United Kingdom also contribute significant visit to Finland.

Compared to the other European countries Finland is doing better than average, the tourism official said mentioning that the winter season was very successful and winter months shows significant growth rates in main winter profiled target countries like Russia and UK.

Recent statistics shows a continuous growth of tourism in Finland.

According to the latest monthly data of Statistics Finland, the number of nights spent by foreign tourists at Finnish accommodation establishments in November 2012 was nearly 357,000, which was 5.4 per cent more than the same period of the last year.

According to the border interview survey 2011, Finland received 7.3 million foreign visitors in 2011 and the number of foreign visitors increased by 17 percent from 2010.

Tourism industry added some 2.2 billion Euros to Finnish economy in the year 2010, a 460 million Euro jump from the previous year.

In 2011, 53 per cent of the foreign visitors were on a leisure trip in Finland and nearly half of the foreign travelers stayed at hotels or motels in Finland, where tourism adds around 2.5 per cent of its GDP and employs more than 60,000 people.

The average amount of money foreign visitors spent while in Finland was 306 euro in 2011.

The Christmas and New Year celebration was very successful for Tourism industry in Lapland, one of the major attractions in Finland.

Airliners, hotels and accommodations entertained a good number of travelers in the just ended year.

Finavia Statistics 2012 shows that the air passengers were 403,892 in Rovaniemi in 2012 and 263,427 in Kittilä. Enontekiö, Ivalo, Kittilä and Rovaniemi of Lapland region had significant number of air passengers in 2012.

According to the Finavia air traffic statistics, air traffic passenger in six Lapland airports were 964,652 in 2011.

Managing director of Levi Travel Limited Jussi Töyrylä told Finland Times Thursday that December was the best ever in Levi in terms of revenue.

“Our central booking office had an increase of 38 percent from last year and 5 percent increase from the previous record December in 2008,” he said explaining that the calendar plays the most important  part of December success and last December it was quite optimal.

‘The air passenger numbers in Kittilä airport grew by 15 percent in December’ he mentioned.