Foreign tourist inflow slides by 53% in March

Overnight stays by foreign tourists at Finnish accommodation establishments declined by 53.0 per cent in March this year and 0.27 million overnight stays were recorded for non-resident tourists, according to Statistics Finland.

Due to the market situation caused by the coronavirus, overnight stays by resident tourists declined by 44.3 per cent from last year and 0.72 million nights were recorded for them.

In March 2020 Finnish accommodation establishments recorded a total of 0.99 million overnight stays, which was 46.9 per cent lower than one year before.

Forty-three per cent of the hotels having reported data for March said they had already closed before the end of the month.

The closed hotels were open in March for 24 days, on average. These figures are preliminary data from Statistics Finland’s statistics on accommodation establishments and they have been collected from accommodation establishments with at least 20 beds or caravan pitches with electricity connection.

The biggest drop was seen in overnight stays by Russians , down by 37,500 nights. Their overnight stays were 60.0 per cent down on March 2019.

The biggest group of non-resident tourists were Germans with 35,400 overnight stays. The second largest group was French with 29,300 overnight stays. The third largest group was Russians with 25,000 overnight stays, and fourth were Dutch tourists with 19,300 overnight stays. The fifth largest group was Britons (16,400 nights), sixth was Swedes (11,800 nights), seventh U.S. tourists (9,800 nights) and eight Estonians (9,300 nights).