Tourism from Russia increases tax-free sales in southeastern city of Lappeenranta

Sales to Russian cross-border travellers account for more than ten per cent of all purchases

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"Zdravstvujte", saleswoman Dolina Olesva greets a reporter walking into the Lappeenranta-based V&K Fashion clothing store.
      Her language choice does not come as a surprise. The bulk of the customers trying on the shop’s clothes and shoes by various top fashion labels speak Russian as their mother tongue.
      Shop manager Natalia Miasnikova explains that it is the tourists from across Finland’s eastern border who have first discovered the boutique that opened its doors this spring.
      Close to 90 per cent of the shop’s sales comes from Russian customers.
     
The fashion shop is not the only outlet benefiting from the purchasing power of the Russian visitors. The sales of shops in the entire Southeastern Finland region have been stimulated by tourism from St. Petersburg and surrounding areas in neighbouring Russia.
      The phenomenon is particularly clear in the city of Lappeenranta, which is nearing and possibly even overtaking Helsinki in the volume of tax-free sales, in other words sales to travellers from outside the EU.
      In the month of April, Lappeenranta’s tax-free sales figures were already slightly higher than those in the nation’s capital.
      For Lappeenranta the tourism industry is monumentally important. Based on a poll, it has been estimated that the Russian tourists spend EUR 160 million in the city each year.
     
South Karelia Chamber of Commerce managing director Mika Peltonen estimates that one in ten service industry jobs in the province have come into existence because of the Russian tourists.
      “The percentage of the sales of the areas shops is even higher”, he reckons.
      “When talking about the retail industry in general, the Russian customers’ impact is between ten and twenty per cent”, Peltonen says.
      The possibilities created by retail tourism are evident also in the area’s range of different types of outlets.
      “The southeastern cities of Lappeenranta and Imatra would not host such a square meterage of retail space if it was not for the frontier trading”, says Timo Heikkilä, Kesko's District Director for Southeastern Finland.
     
The shopkeepers' gamble with the Russian tourists' wallets seems to have paid off.
      Even the recession did not really affect the retail tourism in the area. According to Heikkilä, the effects of the recession were less obvious in the shops in the Southern Karelia region compared with the rest of the country.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Proposal for traffic signs in Russian sparks anger in Lappeenranta (14.6.2010)
  Finland again attracts record numbers of Russian tourists (2.1.2008)
  Russian tourist spending reaches record levels (20.12.2006)

See also:
  Immigration and tourism from Russia boost economy and population of Eastern Finland (15.3.2005)

Helsingin Sanomat