Foreign tourist inflow shrinks by 82% in Aug

Overnight stays by foreign tourists at Finnish accommodation establishments declined by 81.6 per cent in August due to the coronavirus restrictions.

A total of 0.14 million overnight stays by foreign tourists were recorded in August, according to the Statistics Finland.

Meanwhile, the month also saw overnight stays by domestic tourists declining by 6.9 per cent year on year, with 1.51 million nights recorded for them.

Overnight stays by domestic tourists decreased outside of Greater Helsinki by only 0.6 per cent but in Greater Helsinki the number declined by 36.9 per cent.

Finnish accommodation establishments recorded a total of 1.66 million overnight stays, which was 31.3 per cent lower year on year.

Overnight stays did not increase from any of the most important source countries. The smallest drop was seen in overnight stays by Estonians, down by 2,100 nights. The biggest drop was seen in overnight stays by Russians, down by 97,400 nights. Their overnight stays were 97.5 per cent downy6ear on year.

The biggest group of non-resident tourists were Germans with 33,500 overnight stays. The second largest group was Estonians with 22,100 overnight stays. The third largest group was Norwegians with 9,500 overnight stays, and fourth were Swedes with 6,000 overnight stays.

In January to August 2020, a total of 10.36 million nights were spent in Finnish accommodation establishments. This was 36.3 per cent less than that in the corresponding period of 2019.

In all, 8.39 million overnight stays were recorded for resident tourists and 1.97 million for non-resident tourists. The number of nights spent by resident tourists declined by 26.4 per cent and nights spent by non-resident tourists declined by 59.5 per cent from that in the previous year.