Foreign tourist inflow increases by 1.8% in January

Overnight stays by foreign tourists increased by nearly one per cent at Finnish accommodation establishments from last year and good 675,000 nights were recorded for them in January 2019, said Statistics Finland.

Overnight stays by resident tourists increased by 1.8 per cent and accommodation establishments recorded around 871,000 of them. Good 1.5 million overnight stays were recorded at Finnish accommodation establishments in January 2019, which was 1.4 per cent more than one year earlier. 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 number of recorded nights spent by foreign tourists was nearly 267,000 at accommodation establishments in Lapland and 207,500 in Uusimaa.

In January 2019, the number of nights spent by foreign tourists increased in Lapland by 4.9 per cent, while overnight stays by foreign tourists in Uusimaa decreased by 3.4 per cent. French tourists were the biggest group of foreign tourists in Lapland with their good 47,000 overnight stays, growing by as much as 19.2 per cent from the year before.

The number of overnight stays recorded for visitors from Asian countries was nearly 44,000, of which Chinese visitors made up good 18,000 nights. In Lapland, overnight stays of Asian tourists increased by 15.5 per cent, while Asians’ stays in Uusimaa grew more moderately and close on 38,000 overnight stays were recorded for them, which is 1.5 per cent more than twelve months earlier.

In addition to French and Asian tourists, accommodation establishments in Lapland recorded good 36,000 overnight stays for British tourists, even though the figure went down by 5.3 per cent from last year.

The recorded number of nights spent by Russians in Uusimaa was equal to that by Asians, close on 38,000. The number of overnight stays by Russian visitors was, however, 15.3 per cent lower than in January 2018. In addition to Russian and Asian visitors, overnight stays were recorded in Uusimaa third most for British tourists. The number of overnight stays by British tourists at accommodation establishments was around 13,000, which was almost the same as in the year before.

January has typically been the most popular month for Russian visitors measured by overnight stays at accommodation establishments and the situation was the same this year. Russians were by far the largest group of foreign tourists with their nearly 146,000 overnight stays.

In January 2019, the total number of nights spent in hotels was good 1.3 million, which was 1.8 per cent more than twelve months earlier.