Russian ambassador points to problems of Finnish hotel business without Russian tourists

The hotel business in Finland cannot compensate trips of Russian tourists at the expense of guests from other countries. This was reported by Russian Ambassador to Helsinki Pavel Kuznetsov on February 8.

According to him, the destruction of the country's economic ties with the Russian Federation has had an extremely negative impact on the service sector.

"Representatives of the Finnish hotel business openly say that they do not manage to compensate 800 thousand overnight stays of Russian tourists a year at the expense of guests from other countries," - said Kuznetsov in an interview with "RIA Novosti".

It is specified that before the COVID-19 pandemic Russians spent about €600 million a year in Finland.

As the diplomat noted with reference to the survey data, only 15% of entrepreneurs from the eastern part of the country, which suffers most of all due to the lack of Russian tourists, "expect the business environment to improve in the near future".

Earlier in the day, Kuznetsov said that Finland is unsuccessfully trying to save its economy after breaking relations with Russia.

Before that, on January 29, it was reported that Finland has increased deforestation due to a decrease in timber imports from Russia. It was noted that the volume of logging of private forests in 2024 amounted to about 65 million cubic meters, which is 11 million more than in 2023 and 7.5 million cubic meters more than in the peak year of 2021.

In November 2024, economist Maxim Chirkov in a conversation with Izvestia expressed the opinion that as a result of anti-Russian sanctions, many European countries are balancing on the verge of recession. He suggested that the European Union (EU) is unlikely to come up with anything new in this area, and drew attention to the serious growth rates of the Russian economy.