Current situation

Lock-down.

Quarantine rules: 

• Groceries, pharmacies are open - all other shops are closed
• Home office duties where possible
• No events
• Schools and kindergardens are open
• Restrictions for skiing-areas

FINNAIR: 4 weekly flights ZRH-HEL, 2 weekly flights GVA-HEL
KLM flies via AMS and SAS flies via CPH

Consumer behaviour

Swiss tourists are interested in traveling to Finland - during spring/summer time they mostly stayed at home.  Finland is still considered as a COVID-19-safe country. Many Swiss/Finns in Switzerland own a Mökki in Finland. They are wiling to have a COVID-19-test before their travel in order to enter/stay without quarantine in Finland. They look for summer holidays in Finland.

Consumer confidence is at the bottom, according to SECO. Unemployment has risen to three per cent and is expected to rise to as much as seven per cent at worst, to four in the best case scenario. Depending on the forecast, GDP is projected to fall by 6-10% in 2020
forecasts:

GDP in 2020 -6%
GDP in 2021 - 4,9%

Hospitality industry is the hardest hit sector. Also hard hit is transport, storage, information and communication also arts, entertainment, other consumer-oriented services.

Future outlook

Summer 2021 is likely to be concentrated in Finland and Europe, global tourism is not expected to recover until late 2021. For Swiss tourists, we see good potential at the moment in those countries where the spread of the corona has been mild and has a "clean reputation" both in nature and in accommodation and offer good quality, sustainable tourism.

Outside of direct risk groups, there is potential in all target groups. Families with young children are considered to be the most obvious consumers close to home.

Finland's USP's: safety, nature, the fact that social distancing is no problem at all (one can easily stay away 200 meters from each other), clean fresh air.

Travel trade update

Distribution channels and transport companies are in crisis as tourism drops to a fraction of normal volume. The biggest pain is related to the lifting of travel restrictions and the recovery of the market. Tourism sector and transport sector are suffering bad, short-time-work in the tourism sector since march 2020.

Products/regions of interest: Especially Lapland. In summer, touring is the main product and Swiss people travel all over the country.

Updated 3.2.