The negative impact of the coronavirus crisis on Finland's hotel and tourism sector has been severe, but Tampere has avoided the worst of it.
Hotels in the 'Manchester of Finland' saw guest numbers plunge as conferences, events and tourism in general dropped off last spring as the epidemic tightened its grip on the country.
As a result, most of the hotels in Tampere shut down during the spring and early summer.
Mikko Kankaanpää, director of Sokotel, a firm which runs four S Group-branded hotels in the city, said that overnight stays had fallen by around 40 percent compared to pre-corona times.
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Only one of Sokotel's properties-- the 300-room Hotel Ilves--has remained open since the coronavirus epidemic arrived. Kankaanpää said that on the worst nights the establishment could have as few as one guest at a time.
Tampere fared relatively well
However, the director of tourism outfit Visit Tampere, Jari Ahjoharju, noted that the city has so far survived the effects of the pandemic better than many of the country's other tourist destinations, saying that hotels in Helsinki and Lapland rely on foreign tourists.
"A bit more than 80 percent of [visitors to Tampere] are domestic tourists. So yes, we've seen a smaller drop," Ahjoharju said.
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Kankaanpää said it was difficult for the hotels to transition from a near standstill in the spring to full-throttle in the summer.
However, that experience showed that there is a market for domestic tourism in Finland, even though guest numbers dropped again in the autumn as coronavirus cases began to rise after a quiet summer.
Hope for the spring
Kankaanpää said he thinks occupancy rates will begin to rise again in the spring.
"I would estimate that there will be a growing number [of overnight visitors] from April onward and we will be at full capacity once Midsummer arrives," he said.
Kirsi Stenius, who manages two of five Scandic-branded hotels in Tampere--Scandic Tampere Station and Scandic Rosendahl--said that she was a bit more cautious about the industry's recovery timetable, particularly regarding the return of international tourists.
"It's difficult to predict the recovery of international tourism because so much depends on when the vaccines will start to work," she explained.
Ari Vuorentausta, the CEO of Lapland Hotels which operates Lapland Hotels Tampere, said it may take years before tourism rebounds to pre-corona levels, as business travel may be in permanent decline.
Open spaces a Finnish asset
However, he said that Finland still has good opportunities to increase its share of the international tourism market.
"Open spaces and safety are important to customers, and Finland will succeed in that race," Vuorentausta noted.
Meanwhile the hotel manager at Mariott Tampere, Ville Virkki, noted that he thinks visitor volumes could return to previous levels, even if business travel decreases, saying that only the reasons for the travel would change.
Construction of the Tampere Arena is due to be completed in December of next year, and the venue will be joined by a new Lapland Hotels facility, featuring nearly 300 rooms, which will likely intensify competition in the city.
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The new arena is also set to raise the city's appeal as a travel destination, according to Virkki, who said the facility will be very important to Tampere, adding that he thinks it's a "great project."