Tourist overnight stays in Finland down 40% in January-May

Finnish tourism had been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, with a 40-percent drop in the total number of nights spent from January to May, reported Xinhua quoting Statistics Finland on Thursday.

Between January to May this year, there were 5 million nights spent in Finnish accommodation establishments, down 39.7 percent from the same period a year earlier. Of the 5 million nights spent, 3.37 million were recorded for domestic tourists, a 40.1-percent fall from one year ago, while 1.63 million were for foreign tourists, a 38.9-percent drop year on year.

Statistics Finland noted that overnight stays from all of the most important source countries for international tourism to Finland had been down, with the biggest drop of 31.8 percent recorded for Russians, or 112,900 nights, compared with the same period in 2019.

In May, when the pandemic began to weaken, the industry still showed no obvious signs of improvement, with accommodation establishments recording only 280,000 overnight stays, 80.7 percent lower than one year earlier.

Domestic tourism recovered a little in May, with overnight stays down by 74.4 percent from one year earlier, compared with the 86.4-percent drop in April.