Foreign tourist inflow increases by 0.7% in February

Overnight stays by foreign tourists increased by 0.7 per cent in February 2019 at Finnish accommodation establishments from last year and about 603,000 nights were recorded for them, according to Statistics Finland.

Overnight stays by resident tourists increased by 3.5 per cent and accommodation establishments recorded good 1.1 million of them.

Good 1.7 million overnight stays were recorded at Finnish accommodation establishments in February 2019, which was 2.5 per cent more than one year earlier.

Nearly 62,000 overnight stays were recorded for French visitors at Finnish accommodation establishments, which was 15.3 per cent more than in February 2018. Overnight stays of tourists from the United States increased by 14.8 per cent, but their number of overnight stays was considerably lower, around 16,000 nights.

Overnight stays by French visitors were recorded most in accommodation establishments in Lapland, good 49,000, while overnight stays by visitors from the United States were mostly focused on Uusimaa and totalled nearly 9,800. The number of overnight stays by visitors from Asian countries was 117,500 in the whole country, which was 4.8 per cent more than one year before. Of these, the share of Chinese visitors was 46,500 nights.

Overnight stays by Asians increased in Lapland by 9.2 per cent and nearly 66,000 nights were recorded, while in Uusimaa, overnight stays by Asians went down by one per cent and close on 46,000 nights were recorded for them. The total number of recorded nights spent by foreign tourists at accommodation establishments in Lapland was 283,000 and in Uusimaa good 180,000.

In February 2019, the number of nights spent by foreign tourists increased in Lapland by 5.8 per cent, while overnight stays by foreign visitors went down in Uusimaa by 3.4 per cent from the year before. The share of Lapland in all foreign nights spent was close on 47 per cent and the share of Uusimaa was 30 per cent.

Accommodation establishments in Finland recorded around 63,000 overnight stays for both German and British visitors. Nights spent by German tourists went up by 11.0 per cent whereas those spent by British visitors fell by nearly one per cent from last year. However, they were the biggest groups of foreign tourists in February 2019.

In February 2019, the total number of nights spent at hotels was close on 1.5 million, which was 3.1 per cent more than twelve months earlier. Overnight stays by foreign tourists increased by 1.2 per cent and hotels recorded a total of nearly 513,000 of them.

In January and February 2019, the number of nights spent at accommodation establishments in Finland totalled nearly 3.3 million. This was 2.2 per cent higher than in the corresponding period one year earlier. In total, two million overnight stays were recorded for resident tourists and close on 1.3 million for non-resident tourists.