WelDest Health and Well-Being in Tourism Destination

2012 A good year for Finnish tourism business

Visit Finland / Finnish Tourism Board reports that year 2012 was exceptional in tourism. We had more than 7.6 million foreign leisure or business visitors. This is more than 400 000 visitors (5%) than the year before. Also the overnights grew by more than 5% hitting new records.

The daytime visitors seem to be a growing segment and they come from the neighbouring countries like Russia, Estonia and Sweden, but surprisingly also the American cruise passangers and Chinese visitors have found Finland.



City of Naantali. Photo: Lauri Hokkinen

The expenditure was growing too, totaling 2.3 billion Euros.And where do the visitors spend their money? "Shopping, shopping, shopping" says the border interview. Of course accommodation and F&B services will have their slice of the cake too.

For many tourist Finland has been a new destination to visit. 77% of the Japanese visitors were new to Finland. Also French (67%), Italian (66%) and Chinese ( 65%) have experinced Finnish hospitality for the first time ever. Finland seems to be a destination for the FIT (Free individual traveller) segment as only a few travel in groups. Visiting Finland as part of a cruise has also been growing lately, although e.g. Finnair routes from Asia bring us visitors escpecially from China and Japan. Visit Finland website has been redesigned - why not have a look at what Finland can offer you!

The border interview was now conducted for the last time in this format. This is a pity, as for the past 15 years the tourism professionals and academia have been able to utilize the very comprehensive data in various activities. Statistics Finland is currently seeking ways of continuing the data collection in some other format.

WelDest project aims at developing health and well-being tourism especially in destination Naantali at Finland Proper region - perhaps in the future we can report positive growth in visitor numbers also in this tourism segment.



(Source: Matkailusilmä Magazine 02/2013 link)