The city in Finland, Lappeenranta, is committed to "big" football

Lappeenranta is ready to receive fans of football, which will go to the Russian city of St. Petersburg for the 2018 World Cup matches. The hotels have already started receiving applications...

Lappeenranta and Visit Russia, an organization that promotes Russian tourism abroad, signed an agreement on partnership in marketing. The main goal is to work together to attract as many foreign tourists as possible to the World Cup, and in particular to St. Petersburg, where 5 world tournament matches will take place. According to the director of the Union of National and International Travel Agencies Alexander Gorokhov, Lappeenranta became the first European region that showed active interest in the 2018 World Cup and expressed its readiness to support this event.

It would seem, where is the quiet Finnish border town - and where is St. Petersburg with its modern airport, seaports, railway stations and five-star hotels? However, the Finns are sure that Lappeenranta may well become a partner of the city on the Neva in the future mundialya, and that's why.

First, Lappeenranta is Europe. This circumstance for some European fans can be a weighty argument. According to the director of the Union of National and International Travel Agencies Alexander Gorokhov, many of the potential football tourists, especially Finns and Scandinavians, are easier and more convenient to come to St. Petersburg from Lappeenranta. As the expert notes, it can be "in general new categories of tourists and fans who, perhaps, in other conditions will not come to us." Probably, someone will not want to spend the night in the territory of the Russian Federation - for reasons of security or for "political reasons".

Secondly, the city has its own airport, which is expected to receive regular flights by the summer of 2018, and on the border between the Russian Federation and Suomi even think about opening special lanes for rapid passage of border controls.

According to the forecasts of the Organizing Committee-2018, about a million foreign fans will come to Russia for the matches of the football championship. In total, at least 3 million people will take part in the tournament. All these people - both Russian and foreign - should live somewhere during the "pain". And here it begins to be fun. How can we solve them?

In St. Petersburg, there are about 35,000 placements. It is clear that in the city on the Neva, which will be the second headline after Moscow in terms of the number of matches and the number of fans, there will not be enough places for all. In St. Petersburg in recent years in the high summer season, especially in the white nights, the load is so close to the maximum values, and the figures are quite expensive.

In Imatra and Lappeenranta and their surroundings - about 8 thousand beds. Another 16 thousand accommodation places - in cottages and country houses, which are not included in the official statistics. If you take it even wider, then only in the Saimaa region - about 60 thousand accommodation places. Proceeding from this, the authorities of Lappeenranta believe that the prospects for hosting football fans from the region are good. Individual hotels prepare special packages. Applications have already been received from Germany and the US - from almost football organizations, from veterans of sports.


05.11.2017

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