Finns scrap 2.2m trips due to coronavirus

Finnish residents’ leisure trips stopped in April due to the coronavirus situation, according to the Statistics Finland.

Finnish residents cancelled or postponed 1.4 million trips abroad and 0.8 million domestic trips with paid accommodation for which reservations had been made before the restrictions were set in March due to the pandemic.

The trips were scheduled to take place between April and September.

Finnish residents, however, travelled in the first two months of the travel year 2020 in the same way as in the previous years.

At the end of March, the borders of Uusimaa were closed for two weeks. Easter also fell in this period, which is normally a busy time for leisure trips.

Only around one-half of the usual domestic trips to free-time residences and visits to friends or relatives were made in March to April. Travel abroad and to domestic hotels and rented cottages slowed down in March and stopped almost completely in April.

In addition, the inquiry concerning trips in April asked about trips for April to September that had been reserved before the restrictions set due to the pandemic in mid-March. One in every four respondents had made these foreign travel reservations and they estimated that nearly all of them were either cancelled or postponed to a later date due to the coronavirus situation.

Correspondingly, around one in every six of the respondents had reservations for domestic trips with paid accommodation and around 90 per cent of these trips were estimated to have been cancelled or postponed.

Altogether, 4.4 million domestic leisure trips with overnight stay were made in the January to April period. Of these, 3.3 million were trips with free accommodation. Trips with overnight stay in paid accommodation numbered 1.1 million.

Travel restrictions caused by the coronavirus situation also decreased leisure travel in Finland, as around 40 per cent fewer domestic leisure trips were made in the January to April period than in the corresponding period of the previous year.

A total of 1.1 million leisure trips abroad included overnight stay in the destination country in the January to April period of 2020. In January to April, only 0.2 million cruises with overnight stay on board were made. In the early part of the year, 0.2 million same-day trips abroad were made.