Extreme heat may drive tourists to the North, but for the time being, Finnish Lapland is behind Sweden and Norway in terms of summer tourism.
In Lapland several companies in the tourism industry are hoping for growth not only in the winter season, but also in the summer season. It is hoped that the coolness of the north will attract more summer tourists to Finland in the future, when the heat is testing Europe.
Chairman of Lapland’s tourism cluster Brother Matti Hettula estimates that Lapland’s tourism revenue will even double if the potential of the summer season is taken advantage of comprehensively. Actions in this regard have already started, according to him. Recently, several tourism destinations in Lapland have invested more than ever in the key markets of Central Europe in terms of euros.
According to Hettula, the accommodation aspect is not a problem in summer tourism in Lapland, but there is room for improvement, for example, in air connections.
In the year 2022 There were a total of 4.7 million overnight stays by foreign tourists in Finland. The statistics compiled by Visit Finland, which promotes the Finnish tourism industry, show that the slump of the pandemic years has started to rise.
More than half of the overnight stays in the winter season took place in Lapland and Kuusamo. There were 2.3 million overnight stays in the summer season in the whole country, but only 234,000 in the north.
For the government program it is recorded that the prerequisites for the growth of the tourism industry are strengthened in Finland.
“But it doesn’t appear in the state budget. For example, in Sweden, the state supports tourism significantly more than here,” Hettula says.
in Sweden 13 million foreign overnight stays were registered between January and October 2022. That is almost three times more than in Finland all of last year.
The Nordic countries are interesting tourist destinations because of their coolness, says Visit Finland’s market manager for the European region Heli Saari. However, the cool climate has not yet been used as a selling point in marketing the Finnish summer season.
According to Nordic tourism industry statistics, Denmark, Sweden and Norway are far ahead of Finland in the number of overnight stays in the summer season.
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