The city of Savonlinna has entered into a cooperation agreement on charter flights with the Dutch tour operator Voigt Travel and Business Finland. Charter flight connections between Savonlinna and Rotterdam will start next summer with a total of three flights.
The city of Savonlinna has cooperated with Visit Finland in tourism marketing to Central Europe since 2015. The number of international tourists was increasing strongly before the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Before the pandemic, more than 30,000 overnight stays came from the German-speaking Europe and the Benelux countries. About 100,000 Russian tourists visited each year.
About half a million tourists visit the Savonlinna region every year.
- Special thanks for the agreement must be given to Visit Finland, which is a part of Business Finland, and Savonlinna Travel Ltd. Direct charter flights from Central Europe to Savonlinna is a significant step forward in strengthening tourism in the whole Lake Saimaa region and in improving the accessibility of Savonlinna. This creates conditions for year-round tourism, a more versatile internationalization of tourism and also the launching of new investments, says Mayor Janne Laine.
Cooperation with the Dutch Voigt Travel (part of the Stena Line Group) opens up new opportunities for the development of international tourism in the Lake Saimaa area.
- Our common goal is long-term development work that will significantly increase the number of direct flights in the coming years, says Jaana Komi, the CEO of Savonlinna Travel Ltd.
Voigt Travel, the largest organizer of Nordic holiday trips in the Netherlands, will start the first triangle flights between Rotterdam – Savonlinna – Rovaniemi in June 2023. The flights will be flown by the Transavia airline company’s 149-seater plane on June 7th, June 14th and June 21st in 2023. The goal for the coming years is to increase the number of flights. The city’s share of the marketing cooperation is 46,000 euros. In addition to the city of Savonlinna, Visit Finland will also invest significantly in the marketing cooperation.
- Finland now has the opportunity to repeat the success of the winter season also in the summer season and with the help of direct connections to significantly increase tourism from Central Europe. Savonlinna is the perfect destination due to its good location: Customers can easily enjoy the extensive supply of the entire Lake Saimaa region. In Western Europe, the majority of vacation trips take place between May and September, and for us only a part of that time is high season, so the new connections bring the desired extension to the season as well. Customers arriving on chartered flights also need more services. This increases the opportunities for the development of a new type of business, comments Jyrki Oksanen, Director Dach and Benelux at Visit Finland.
Voigt Travel is the market leader in the Netherlands as a seller of holidays to the Nordic countries. In 2022, Swedish Stena Line Travel Group AB bought Voigt Travel. The company is the market leader for Nordic holidays in the Netherlands, serving 50,000 passengers annually, with an annual turnover of more than 50 million euros.
