Finland eyes bigger share of China's tourism market

Finland is enhancing cooperation with Chinese tourism service providers to tap into the China's booming outbound tourism market.

Finland Friday inked memorandums of understanding with Chinese tourism platforms Fliggy and Utour, and airliner JuneYao to attract more Chinese tourists.

Finpro Oy and Alibaba's online travel platform Fliggy will upgrade their partnership with Aurora Project 2.0 to enhance experiences for Chinese tourists in Finland this summer.

Finpro Oy is an organization which helps small- to medium-sized Finnish enterprises go international, encouraging foreign direct investment in Finland and promoting tourism.

Over 356,000 Chinese travelers visited Finland last year, up 35 percent year on year, and the growth rate soared to over 80 percent year on year in the first four months of 2017, according to Paavo Virkkunen, executive vice president of Finpro Oy and head of Visit Finland.

Virkkunen attributed the rapid growth of Chinese visitors to the growing awareness of Finland as an unique tourism destination as well as partnerships with Chinese online travel platforms such as Fliggy.

"We have learned a lot from Chinese online travel platforms, especially about changes in consumer behavior and demand structure," Virkkunen said.

Visit Finland has been developing diverse tourism products across the four seasons to cater to the demands of Chinese travelers, according to Virkkunen.

Fliggy has set up a workshop focused on finding unique tourism destinations. It leverages Alibaba's big data resources to develop customized tourism products for travelers and uses the latest technology such as live streaming to promote destinations, according to Li Shaohua, president of Fliggy.

"We are not just selling tourism products, but also trying to integrate local tourism resources and design customized products to offer consumers enhanced travel services at lower costs," Li said.

Tourism plays a role in opening people's eyes to new places and is a good starting point for other businesses to develop, Virkkunen said.