The growth in tourism from abroad to Finland slowed down in 2008, while increasing somewhat from the year before, thanks to the fact that the beginning of the year was very good.
Finland’s balance of tourism stayed at the level of the year before, with the increase in foreign travel by Finns leading to approximately as much spending by Finnish travellers abroad, as what foreign tourists brought in.
The number of overnight stays by foreign tourists at Finnish accommodation establishments grew by well over three per cent from the previous year.
The figures derive from Statistics Finland's Tourism Statistics 2009 publication.
The beginning of 2008 looked very promising as overnight stays increased by 10 per cent over the January to May period. Negative effects of the economic downturn began to show in the latter half of the year when a slight loss was recorded in the number of nights spent.
In 2008, the hotel room occupancy rate stayed nearly at the level of the year before, at 53.3 per cent. The rise in the occupancy rate was held back by a more than 600 room increase in capacity.
The average room rate for the whole country rose by around 4 per cent to EUR 88 in 2008.
Most of the increase in Finland’s inbound tourism continued to come from Russia and Britain. Overnight stays by Russian visitors increased by 20 per cent and those of British tourists by 6 per cent. The growth in inbound tourism from other EU countries remained nearly at the level of the year before.
Finland’s tourism receipts from abroad rose to EUR 2.2 billion in 2008, showing an increase of 5 per cent compared with the previous year.
Travel by Russians to Finland increased, with tourism from Russia accounting for 30 per cent of tourism receipts.
The growth in outbound tourism from Finland and the continuing popularity of long-distance destinations put Finland’s outbound tourism expenditure to EUR 3.1 billion. The growth in tourism expenditure was 5 per cent from the year before.
As the number of Finns travelling abroad was higher than that of foreign tourists coming to Finland, the deficit of Finland's tourism balance rose to nearly EUR 0.9 billion.
