Tourists from China, U.S. lead surge in visitors to Finland in 2024

Foreign tourists made a total of 4.9 million trips to Finland in 2024 and spent a combined 3.7 billion euros, according to the latest data from Visit Finland and Statistics Finland.

Tourists arrived from 106 countries and visited 221 destinations. About 90 percent of the trips were overnight. Leisure travelers comprised 74 percent of visitors, with business travelers accounting for the rest.

Some 508,000 foreign tourists visited Finland in December, spending 522 million euros, a significant jump from December 2023 when 439,000 tourists visited the country and spent 433 million euros. The biggest month in sheer number of tourists was August, when 562,000 tourists visited.

Foreign travelers spent an average of 764 euros per trip, with people from China and the U.S. spending the most. Seasonally, winter tourists spend more money than summer tourists, Visit Finland’s head of business intelligence, Katarina Wakonen, said in a statement.

“Tourists are more and more careful about their spending ” and a decrease in outlays at the destination is a wider international phenomenon,” Wakonen said. “However, the attraction of Finnish winter is strong among international tourists. The once-in-a-lifetime experiences offered by the Finnish winter are best known to foreign tourists, and they are still willing to pay for them.”

Increasing summer tourism is an important goal in the development of Finnish tourism. Large tourist flows mainly move during the holiday season, and increasing the awareness of Finland’s summertime offerings could increase Finland’s share of the growing tourism market in the Nordic countries, according to Visit Finland.