Finland targets booming Indian market for further growth
To promote travel from India to Finland, as many as 16 travel and tourism companies from Finland participated in Finland India Tourism Workshop 2025 held in New Delhi on Wednesday.
In order to strengthen its footprint in India, the biggest source market in Asia in terms of tourists for Finland as well as a rapidly growing market, 16 travel and tourism companies from Finland participated in the Finland India Tourism Workshop 2025 organised in Delhi on Wednesday, in order to meet with leading outbound travel tourism professionals from India.
The Finnish participants included a mélange of tourism boards, hotels, Destination Management Companies (DMCs) as well as FinnAir, the national flag carrier of Finland, while the Indian professionals were mainly from the luxury travel companies focussed on outbound travel from India.
According to the organiser, Sara Consulting Services, the workshop, that was organised in Mumbai and Delhi, got a very good response from the Indian travel trade community, reflecting its performance over the years.
Sara Sodhi Juneja
“The Indian market has performed very well for Finland in 2024 and reached record highs across many parametres. We have had actually a 35 pc growth in overall overnights in 2024 compared to 2023 and this is the year when we actually surpassed the overnights from 2019 as well, which was also like a benchmark year for us pre-pandemic, and in 2025 again, in February and March, we have seen record overnights, highest-ever from India to Finland and overall the growth for the entire Lapland region was also 90 pc in 2024 compared to 2023,’’ Sara Sodhi Juneja, Founder and CEO, Sara Consulting Services, tells India Outbound.
Rovaniemi, the capital of Finnish lapland and the mythical home of Santa Claus, is one of the most popular destinations in Finland for tourists, including Indians.
Sanna Karkkainen
“The response has been overwhelmingly warm since we started coming here, because we noticed that it is a unique destination. Rovaniemi, the official hometown of Santa Claus in Lapland, offers something really exotic and interesting for Indian audience and now, as the awareness and overall product knowledge for Lapland and whole Finland has become so much bigger and better, so we see that there is a huge fan base of tour operators all over in India,” Sanna Karkkainen, CEO, Visit Rovaniemi, the destination promotion organisation of Rovaniemi, tells India Outbound.
Karkkainen says that she has been a regular visitor to India and has seen rapid growth over the years.
For Finnair, the workshop presented an opportunity to reconnect with the travel trade and introduce new products and services of the carrier which serves as a network airline, connecting passengers not just to Finland but beyond as well.
Anupam Vig
“Western Europe, with cities like London, Amsterdam Zurich, has always been very popular as a destination for Indian travellers. Finland, which was aways a popular destination, is getting a lot more traction in the Indian market,’’ Anupam Vig, General Manager (India), Finnair tells India Outbound.
The organisers say that the workshop, held in Mumbai and then New Delhi, was very successful. “All the agents have been very happy. My key role behind this is always to make sure that people go more enriched about Finland and about the region and I think that endeavour has been fulfilled because people have been very happy about the learning and especially the interest for the workshop is also very high because there is a lot of learning involved and people want to learn about the regions and sell those regions and I think the next at least five years are definitely going to be very booming for Finland and the entire Nordic countries,’’ says Sodhi Juneja.