Finnair said on Wednesday that it will add capacity to Beijing with three weekly flights from the Beijing Daxing International Airport, the first overseas carrier to have such routes in both airports in Beijing.
The flights from the newly-built Daxing airport will commence operation on November 3, weeks after the new airport's scheduled opening on September 30 of this year.
"China is a very important market and the decision is made based on the huge potential in the Chinese market and we have been China for many years," Robert Öhrnberg, general manager of Greater China with Finnair said in an interview with the Global Times on Wednesday.
He said China is among Finnair's top three markets globally after Finland and Japan, and they are satisfied with the load factor performance in China.
Finnair flights will depart from Daxing on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays. The new frequencies connect smoothly to Finnair's network of over 100 destinations in Europe, allowing travellers short flight times and convenient transfers via Helsinki.
The booming market is brought by the rising number of travellers from China. In recent years, the number of Chinese tourists to Finland has steadily increased, and China is among the top five traveler source countries to Finland.
A Chinese market report released by the Official Travel Guide of Finland VisitFinland.com showed that interest in adventure travel among Chinese travellers is getting higher.
The sports tourism, medical tourism and educational travel markets are also booming, according to the report.
A total of 37,000 visas were issued to Chinese citizens in 2018, a year-on-year increase of 12.5 percent, according to Jarno Syrjälä, the Finnish ambassador to China, who made the speech at a tourist promotion event held in Beijing in March.
The stopover tourism from China last year hit 384,000, up 6 percent from the previous year, and the target for 2019 will be 400,000 travelers, according a report from industrial website travellinkdaily.com in March.
Chinese passengers in Helsinki airport increased by 14 percent year-on-year in last year, and this figure is expected to rise to 15 percent this year, according to a report from Chinese aviation site caacnews.com.cn in June.
Additionally, Tibet Airlines opened flights from Jinan, East China's Shandong Province to Helsinki in April and Juneyao Airlines is expected to have its maiden flight from Shanghai to Helsinki on Friday.
Finnair operates in seven destinations in China including Shanghai and Guangzhou.
To explore more markets in China, this spring, Finnair announced code share collaborations with Juneyao Airlines and China Southern, which brought 13 new destinations to Finnair's customers.
