TALLINN - The number of foreigners visiting Tallinn increased sharply in 2004, statistics released last week showed.
Last year accommodation establishments throughout the capital handled 957,000 foreign guests, or 31 percent more than in 2003. "The result is all the more remarkable since the number of foreign tourists in Europe grew only by 4 percent and by 10 percent in the world," Evelin Tsirk, head of the city's tourism department, noted.
The rapid growth was primarily due to increasing throngs of holiday-makers, while the number of businesspeople visiting the Estonian capital remained unchanged, the tourism department said. Still, among business travelers, the city saw more participants in conferences and fairs in recent years, the department added.
Crucially, many of last year's foreign guests had visited Tallinn before.
In terms of a country-based breakdown, Finns continued to dominate the list of foreign visitors, and their numbers increased by 115,000 last year compared with 2003. The number of Swedish tourists grew by 17,000, Germans by 14,000 and Italians by 12,000.
Overall, foreign tourists' travel behavior changed somewhat. They stayed more often in hotels instead of spending the night aboard ships and showed more interest in local history and culture, as well as in spa and beauty services. Also, more trips outside the capital were made.
Compared with the number of tourists staying at hotels in Tallinn, Stockholm, Helsinki and Riga, Tallinn takes first place. Last year hotels in the Swedish capital handled 899,000 foreign visitors, while Helsinki saw 767,000 and Riga 620,000.
