Asian stopover tourists wanted for Finland

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Snowmobiling in Finland

VISIT Finland is stepping up its attention on North Asia to offset the significant decrease in Russian visitors, traditionally a key market, having launched the Stopover Finland campaign in Asia to stay in the country for a few hours or days.

The Finnish NTO has seen encouraging growth from North Asia, according to Visit Finland’s head of global sales promotion, Heli Mende.

“Travel from China to Finland keeps growing and we see a lot of potential there in the coming years. In fact, overnights from Asia grew from 591,342 to 728,806 last year. Japan is a mature market while South Korea is a new market for us,” she said.

“We are also looking into ways to strengthen Finland’s position as mono-destination,” said Mende, adding that Visit Finland wants Asian visitors to venture beyond Helsinki and Lapland to lesser-known areas like the Lakeland district and coastal archipelago.

Finnair, head of travel products for product development and ancillary business, Anssi Partanen, said: “Finland in summer is a hidden jewel and needed to be explored by Asians. Our traffic from Asia increased by 6.9 per cent to 10.3 million in 2015 and (Finnair) just added Fukuoka and Guangzhou this summer season.”

For Tallink Silja Line, which has recorded double-digit growth from Asia, getting Asians to cruise the Baltic Sea in winter is what the luxury cruise line hopes to achieve.

Said its international sales director, Nina Tähtinen: “In winter (Asians) might visit Lapland as a mono-destination (to view the Aurora Borealis) without cruise, so we want them to try our Helsinki-Tallinn or Helsinki-Stockholm cruises before they fly back home from Helsinki.”

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