With the start of Air India’s direct flight between New Delhi and Stockholm, Visit Sweden is expecting a further increase in visitor arrivals from India. In the last five years (from 2011 to 2016), Sweden has witnessed a 128 per cent growth in total from India. “We are expecting continued growth moving forward given higher accessibility with Air India’s new direct flight from Delhi to Stockholm this year. We also see an increase in interest among the Indian target group,” said Lotta Thiringer, regional director, growth & development, Visit Sweden. The first flight takes off on August 15, India’s Independence Day, which also marks the start of the Stockholm culture week, which this year will have India as theme. Visit Sweden together with the City of Stockholm and Swedavia will partner with Air India to increase awareness about the destination.
Stockholm receives the most Indian visitors overall in Sweden, catering to luxury visitors with upscale hotels, Michelin Star restaurants, exclusive excursions and world-class shopping. “An area of growing interest for this segment is Swedish Lapland, a nature escape with once in a lifetime experiences like a night at the ICEHOTEL, a design hotel built entirely out of ice and snow, and the Northern Lights. This is the luxury of authenticity, a stress free life, fresh air and pure nature. Sweden does not position itself as traditional luxury destination, but is a place for people seeking something else, something new and unexplored,” mentioned Thiringer. Pointing out that Visit Sweden as the national destination marketing organisation is primarily concerned with leisure travel, and is not actively targeting the MICE segment, Thiringer added, “However, many hotels and businesses in the Swedish tourism industry are seeing more MICE visitors from India.”
Visit Sweden’s promotional strategy in India is focused on the travel trade – increasing awareness and in-depth knowledge among agents and operators to get more packages and customised trips to Sweden and Scandinavia on the market. “In this way we aim to leverage the growing interest that we are seeing. We have partnered with Visit Norway and Visit Denmark in a joint effort by the Scandinavian Tourist Board to get the message out to the trade and support the agents and tour operators with destination knowledge, contacts and content,” stated Thiringer.
Visit Sweden’s partnership with Airbnb to turn the entire country into an Airbnb listing has a broad and long-term initiative aiming to get more travellers to discover Sweden. “The initiative in itself is about creating awareness and engagement and is primarily targeting US travellers but has already received a lot of attention around Europe and parts of Asia,” said Thiringer.