Overnight stays by resident tourists remain low in May

The recovery of tourism is illustrated by comparison with the year before the coronavirus crisis started in 2020, according to Statistics Finland.

For leisure trips, overnight stays by resident tourists were roughly 22 per cent lower than in May 2019. Overnight stays by resident business travellers were roughly 40 per cent less.

Meanwhile, overnight stays by non-resident leisure travellers were 92 per cent less than two years ago and 77 per cent less by non-resident business travellers.

Examined by region, overnight stays decreased compared to May 2019 most in relative terms in Uusimaa, by 64 per cent and least in Kainuu, where same amount of nights spent were recorded than two years ago.

The total number of nights spent in hotels was 0.64 million.

A total of 57,000 overnight stays were recorded for foreign tourists. Recorded nights spent by resident tourists in hotels numbered 0.58 million.

Among the regions, the highest occupancy rates of hotel rooms were measured in Satakunta, 48.1 per cent, and in North Karelia, 42.4 per cent. In Helsinki, the hotel room occupancy rate was 20.0 per cent, 34.8 per cent in Tampere, 34.5 per cent in Turku, 39.4 per cent in Oulu and 21.5 per cent in Rovaniemi.

In May 2021, the realised average price of a hotel room was EUR 90.45 per day for the whole country. Twelve months earlier, it was EUR 89.13.

There was a total of 49,163 hotel rooms available in Finland, which was 25,655 more than in May 2020.

In January to May 2021, a total of 3.91 million nights were spent in Finnish accommodation establishments. This was 22 per cent less than in the corresponding period one year earlier.

In all, 3.65 million overnight stays were recorded for resident tourists and 0.26 million for non-resident tourists. The number of nights spent by resident tourists increased by 7.9 per cent and nights spent by non-resident tourists declined by 84 from the previous year.

Overnight stays declined from all of the most important countries of inbound tourism to Finland. The smallest drop was seen in overnight stays by Estonians . Overnight stays by them declined by 18 400 nights. The biggest drop was seen in overnight stays by Russians, down by 233,900 nights. Their overnight stays were 96.6 per cent down on January to May 2020

The biggest group of non-resident tourists were Estonians with 40,000 overnight stays followed by Germans with 38,000 overnight stays, Swedes with 23,000 overnight stays and U.S. with 13,000 overnight stays.