Norwegian airlines are renewing their Gran Canaria route connecting the island with Helsinki, the capital of Finland, starting next April 8, which will be operational throughout the summer season, allowing Finnish travellers to visit Gran Canaria the whole year round.
Visitors flying from Finland for many years have had no regular connection with Gran Canaria during the summer, so this new route will make it possible to make the impact of tourists from Finland less seasonal, previously having been concentrated exclusively in the winter season, said Tourism Minister of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, Inés Jiménez. More than 132,300 passengers flew to the Island from Finland in 2017, an increase of 5.2% (+6,600) over the previous year, when more than 125,700 people visited Gran Canaria.
Norwegian currently has seven weekly flights between Finland and Gran Canaria over the winter season, six from Helsinki and one from Oulu. The creation of this new summer route will facilitate up to about 6,000 passengers to visit over the summer season, Jiménez concluded, and will be a reality thanks to the collaboration of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria and the flight fund, developed by the public company Promotur, for the promotion of Canary Islands tourism.
Norwegian have connected Gran Canaria with 24 airports in Scandinavia, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the Iberian Peninsula over the past year moving more than half a million passengers to the Island, a figure that will continue to increase thanks to the investment made in the Peninsular and German market for 2018.
Finnair will schedule more weekly flights
The airline Finnair, which currently connects Helsinki with Gran Canaria during the winter, is to increase the frequency of their flights adding two more transfers per week, so it will go from the current five to a total of seven. This will give yet another boost to the excellent growth in arrival figures from Finnish passengers to the island, the destination chosen by half of tourists from this Nordic country travelling to the Canary Islands.
Finnair moved 22,500 passengers from Finland to Gran Canaria between January and November 2017, seeing an increase of 7% over the previous year. About 20% of Finns who visit the island fly with this airline.
A faithful market in growth
69.6% of Finnish visitors who travel to Gran Canaria are repeat tourists. Spending an average stay of 11.5 days on the island with a higher than average expenditure of around €1,250 per person.
35.5% book their holidays in Gran Canaria more than three months in advance, 70.8% choose their accommodation through the website of a tour operator, while 51% opt for non-hotel establishments.
According to the latest survey from Spanish Airport Authority AENA, Nordic arrivals grew by 7% between January and November 2017, that´s 876,000 people having travelled to Gran Canaria from Norway, Sweden, Finland or Denmark, an increase of 57,579 people over the 818,481 Nordic visitors who came to the Island during the same period of 2016.