Winter wonderlands fight against Covid-19

This article is focusing on the characteristics of tourism in Finland and especially on the current situation in the world right now, in other words Covid-19 pandemic. Our main interest is to show how it changed the tourism industry rapidly and what it made to accommodation services and flight industry in Finland.

Finland is one of the Nordic countries and located on the both sides of polar circle. It is known as the country of thousand lakes and where the sun never sets. This is partially true during summer, as above the polar circle there is nightless night during the summer months. Winter time in Finland is magical too, as the snow covers the forests of Lapland and polar night keeps the days short and dark, but in a way, cozy.

Almost every form of tourism happening in Finland is somehow connected to nature. In the north, main interests are seeing the "winter wonderland" scenery, seeing the northern lights, go snowmobiling or for a husky ride and so on. In the other parts tourism is more focused on experiencing the nightless night and enjoying the lake scenery or the Finnish archipelago. Only in the capital area tourism is more focused on visiting the city of Helsinki and for example getting to know to the Finnish design culture. All in all, there's a great variety in the field of tourism and surely something interesting found for everybody.

Tourism in Finland can be divided into two main areas. First and the most visited area is the capital region of Finland and the second visited one is Northern Finland, also know as Lapland. Tourism in Finland was in about 7-8% increase when the Corona situation began. The situation was especially rising in Lapland, which has been the major interest in the field of tourism in Finland these past years.

In 2020 things started to change. It was en exceptional year for the whole tourism industry and for the accommodation services. Year 2020 started well but very soon came the information about Covid-19 and countries around the world started to close their borders from tourists. In Finland, during April, overnight stays by domestic travelers decreased by 86 percent and about 95 percent by foreign tourists. In 2020 the total amount of overnight stays by domestic travelers was 12 millions and 2,3 millions by foreign tourists. In September-December the decline in domestic travelers overnight stays stayed close to 20 percents. By foreign tourists, the amount of overnight stays in May-December 2020 was about 85 percent lower than in the previous year. This shows that the effect of Covid for the tourism industry was huge. There occurred a rapid change in the overnight stays and flights. It is not a wonder that there has been a lot of companies and entrepreneurs that have needed to shut down and come up with something as for their living. Here are shown some figures about overnight stays during these past years the pandemic has been going on.

In these statistics we can see the total numbers of accommodations in whole Finland during 2019-2021. On the lower chart we can see the utilization percentages of the rooms. All these figures show how the drop happened. The weakening demand for accommodation services was clearly reflected in the supply of accommodation capacity. During 2020 an average of 1100 accommodation services were open, offering approximately 56 000 rooms. Many of the accommodation services were forced to shut down temporarily due to the pandemic situation going on. Below is also a chart about percentage change of the overnight stays compared to previous year and the last one shows how the overnights were distributed by nationality.

As Covid-19 spread around the world, countries started to close their borders. This affected the whole flight industry of course, as there was suddenly nobody flying anymore. The amount of flights was cut down quickly and some of the flights were just empty planes flying so that airlines wouldn't lose their spots at certain airports.

Helsinki-Vantaa airport is the biggest airport in Finland. Majority of flights happening there are connecting flights between destinations outside Finland. Finnish airline Finnair flights straight flights to several different Asian cities and this has been their most important focus this last decade. When Covid-19 hit, problems occurred, naturally.

Flights to Northern Finland are mainly based on seasonal tourism. What happened during the rise of Covid, was that the majority of flights to Northern Finland got also cancelled or re-scheduled. Even though there were some domestic travelers using the flights, the amounts weren't enough to keep the flights profitable.

In these figures above can be seen the distribution of the flights in 2021 and the change percentage from the previous year. As seen in figure 5, about 99% of the international flights happened during 2021 flew to Helsinki. When it comes to domestic flights, situation is a bit more divided between couple of different airports. I have selected the most significant airports in Finland to my comparison. To be mentioned, this situation in these figures is from this year, 2021, from January to October. This year has been slightly better, which makes the statistics a bit different than for example a year ago. Below, in figure 8, can be seen the situation of flights in 2019. There are included both domestic and international flights. Also two more airports are included, just to show the broader picture. During 2020 and 2021 flights to these two more airports have dropped as well.

We can't know the future yet or how Covid is going to change the world as it continues it's way around it. But we can predict something and hope for the best. Right now, some of the biggest cities popularity has maybe lowered, as right after Covid it doesn't feel the safest to travel to big cities. This is where the strength of Finland steps in. Finland is known as a safe travel destination where there is plenty of space for everybody.

Key issues in bringing back the tourism industry in full motion is to get the global pandemic situation improve and after that to get the air traffic back on track and return the consumers sense of safe traveling. Of course, this takes some time, but as the health actions and vaccinations get better all the time, this is not a final goodbye to the Finnish tourism industry yet. In a couple of years time the situation will hopefully be a lot better again.