The overwhelming majority of the packages, round 86 p.c, have been to Europe. Among European locations, Greece was the highest vacation spot with nicely over 184,000 packages, accounting for 41.5 p.c of all journey packages to the area.
The conflict that began in Europe in February 2022, the ensuing vitality and financial disaster and the nonetheless lingering Covid-19 pandemic are components that, at the same time as particular person phenomena, would create challenges for the journey trade. However, the sector, which had been surviving the pandemic on the again of home tourism, was given a breather in spring 2022, when worldwide journey from Finland to overseas and from overseas to Finland lastly took off. Although gross sales have been nonetheless lagging behind the pre-pandemic degree on the finish of the yr, the state of affairs within the journey trade was higher than might have been anticipated given the challenges of the working setting.
The Association of Finnish Travel Industry (SMAL) has compiled the normal package deal travel¹ statistics, that includes flight-based packages from Finland to worldwide locations in 2022 bought by its member corporations. Overall, simply over 518,000 packages have been bought which has a rise of 344 p.c in comparison with 2021. However, there was nonetheless a 41 p.c drop in package deal gross sales in comparison with the pre-pandemic interval. In 2022, the mixed turnover of tour operators organizing flight-based journey packages was 494.7 million euros, a rise of 374 p.c in comparison with the earlier yr. In 2019, the corresponding determine was 755.6 million euros, a drop of 34,5 p.c in 2022 in comparison with the pre-pandemic interval.
The overwhelming majority of the packages, round 86 p.c, have been to Europe. Among European locations, Greece was the highest vacation spot with nicely over 184,000 packages, accounting for 41.5 p.c of all journey packages to the area. The progress in journey to Greece in comparison with 2021 was 410 p.c, though there was nonetheless a 23 p.c drop in comparison with 2019. The second favourite vacation spot for Finns was Spain, with slightly below 144,000 packages. This was simply over 32 p.c of all packages to Europe. The Canary Islands accounted for almost all of packages to Spain amounting over 120,000 journeys. Compared to 2021, the expansion in journey to Spain was 199 p.c. However, in comparison with 2019, the drop in journey to Spain was nonetheless 38 p.c.
Some 48,000 journey packages have been made to locations within the Middle East and North Africa, accounting for greater than 9 p.c of all statistical packages. Sales to Middle East and North Africa locations elevated by 542 p.c in comparison with 2021, though there was nonetheless a decline of round 57 p.c in comparison with the pre-pandemic interval. Turkey is a long-standing favourite of Finnish travelersin the area, with round 39,000 package-holiday vacationers going there in 2022, accounting for 81 p.c of all gross sales within the area. Around 3,800 vacationers went to the United Arab Emirates and round 3,200 to Egypt.
Some 25 000 journey packages have been made to long-haul locations, a rise of 432 p.c in comparison with 2021. The drop in long-haul gross sales was nonetheless 71 p.c of the 2019 package deal journey quantity. Cabo Verde was the most well-liked long-haul vacation spot, with round 8,800 journeys, or over 35 p.c of journeys to the area. Travel to Thailand was solely free of all pandemic-related journey restrictions ultimately of the yr, which means that solely round 7,500 journey packages to the normal primary vacation spot for Finns could possibly be made throughout 2022.
The recognition of lengthy worldwide cruises was rising nicely amongst Finns earlier than the pandemic. In 2022, round 3 700 cruise packages have been bought. The majority of those have been European cruises. Cruise gross sales grew by 313 p.c in comparison with 2021, though there was a drop of greater than 53 p.c in comparison with 2019. It is price mentioning, nonetheless, that the figures above are offered by tour operators and don’t depend journeys booked by vacationers straight with the cruise corporations.
Top 10 listing of Destinations in 2022
| 2022 order | 2019 order | Trips taken in 2022 |
| 1. Greece | (1.) | 184.476 |
| 2. Spain | (2.) | 184.476 |
| 3. Turkey | (3.) | 39.243 |
| 4. Cyprus | (8.) | 20.533 |
| 5. Portugal | (7.) | 19.235 |
| 6. Italy | (5.) | 18.242 |
| 7. Croatia | (6.) | 11.867 |
| 8. Cabo Verde | (-) | 8.825 |
| 9. Austria | (-) | 8.065 |
| 10. Thailand | (4.) | 7.579 |
On the statistics
SMAL and its predecessor SMY have gathered statistics on package deal journey since 1965. The journey trade has modified significantly since these instances. The package deal journey idea has modified types over time and conventional package deal journey holidays are an increasing number of steadily joined by flight+resort or comparable preparations
which are booked on-line. These are additionally thought of package deal journey. Travelers more and more additionally guide their very own tailormade journeys based on their very own wishes. These journeys are actually extra typically included within the statistics on package deal journey as nicely, since 2018 laws on package deal journey added different sorts of journey to the statistics as nicely.
A majority of the figures are based mostly on the gross sales of package deal journey holidays which are produced serially. For this cause, widespread European metropolis locations, as an illustration, should not represented within the appropriate proportion within the statistics.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network the place she is the Editor-in Chief. She can also be answerable for the each day operation and the monetary coverage. She holds a Bachelor’s diploma in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has a few years of each tutorial and industrial expertise inside the journey trade. She has written/edited quite a few articles in numerous tourism magazines.