About ten percent of foreign tourists in Finland come from Sweden, according to the overnight stay statistics. After the pandemic, they have now almost returned to the level before that, but have not managed to achieve a greater lift than that.
A dusty picture of Finland
Tourists from Sweden spend the night significantly more often with relatives and friends than other groups, which means that many of them have a connection to Finland.
– We would obviously like to expand the target group and give the young generation of Swedes a new perspective on Finland, says Hietasaari and continues:
– In some places, the Swedes’ image of Finland is somewhat dusty.
Russian tourism provided a good lesson
Hietasaari reminds that it is important that tourists come from many different countries.
– It is much safer in the long term because you never know what is happening in the world.
– In Eastern Finland, there are many areas that have been dependent on Russian tourism, and now they are in great difficulty because the influx of Russian tourists stopped abruptly. We learned a good lesson from this.
In the video, Kristiina Hietasaari explains why it is difficult to get more Swedes to visit Finland, and how the Finnish government makes the work difficult.