Finland is one of world’s top locations for international meetings

The Finnish capital ranked 12th out of the 1 251 cities assessed in the latest edition of the UIA’s International Meetings Statistics Report, coming in narrowly ahead of 16th-placed Stockholm, 19th-placed Copenhagen and 21st-placed Oslo.

Finland was similarly ranked as the 12th most popular host country out of the 161 countries assessed, after hosting almost 2.5 per cent of the 12 472 non-corporate meetings organised by international associations.

The top three places in the ranking were retained by Singapore, Belgium and South Korea. Norway, Sweden and Denmark came in 18th, 19th and 22nd, respectively.

Finland has emerged as a popular meeting and conference destination due to its research efforts in various fields and reputation as a functional and reliable host country, analysed Ines Antti-Poika, the head of business events at Business Finland’s Finland Convention Bureau.

“Finland has ranked among the 20 most popular meeting countries for a while,” she highlighted, pointing to statistics showing that the country was the world’s 18th most popular host in 2000–2019.

Last year, she added, was record breaking both in terms of the number of events and the number of attendees. The year is set to remain the high-water mark for the industry for the foreseeable future given the volume of conferences either postponed or moved online as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The industry is expected to recover to the levels of last year no earlier than in 2023.

“The economic impact of meetings is crucial for the conference and accommodation industry of Finland, and the losses caused by the coronavirus are massive,” said Antti-Poika.

Good News from Finland is published by Finnfacts, which is part of Business Finland.