American tourists returns to Sweden as the economy improves
– but Chinese visitors are not prioritized by tourism promoters.

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Swedish tourism boomed last year despite financial crisis and global economic recession. While most other European countries suffered from declining visitor numbers, Sweden witnessed a 3 percent increase of foreign tourists – more than any other European country.

During a breakfast seminar on Tuesday at the yearly political week on the island of Gotland, Sweden’s Minister of Enterprise Maud Olofsson said that the tourism industry has emerged as one of the country's most important industries – and a sector where more and more people are getting employed. It's now three times bigger than the troubled auto industry in terms of export value.

“This is an important industry that the government will to continue to support”, she said.

Total consumption by tourists increased by 6 percent to 252 billion kronor ($31 billion) last year while export value swelled 13 percent, according to figures released by the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (Tillväxtverket) on Tuesday. Compared to year 2000, consumption has increased almost 70 percent while export revenues is up more than 130 percent.

Today some 160,000 people work in the Swedish tourism industry, up 30 percent compared to ten year ago.

Not surprisingly, countries near Sweden top the list of incoming visitors, with Norway as number one, followed by Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.

The number of tourists from the United States (the seventh biggest incoming group) declined almost 10 percent last year, due to the recession. But according to Visit Sweden, a state funded organization that promotes the brand of Sweden and Swedish destinations internationally, the number of American tourists are expected to bounce back this year.

“The US is a massive market for us. The financial crisis hit the country hard, which we can see in our figures”, the organisation’s chief executive officer Thomas Brühl told The Swedish Wire. “But according to our New York office, tourists from the US are eager to travel again. It’s going to be an interesting year”.

Despite being regarded as the world economy's new engine, the growing Chinese market is not prioritized by Visit Sweden. Every year some 31 million Chinese travel aboard, but only 6 percent goes to Europe.

“In the long run the Chinese market is very important. But we don’t invest much there now”, Thomas Brühl said.

Sweden has a tourism promotion office in Beijing together with Norway and Denmark. Last year some 100,000 incoming travels were made from China to Sweden, compared to 3.3 million from Norway and 2.6 million from Germany.

Today, the most important markets to lure new visitors to Sweden from are Latin countries, such as Italy, Spain and France, and Russia.

Brazil, Russia, India and China, the world's top four emerging markets which represent 40 percent of the global population, are the focus of all travel professionals looking for new clientele with money to spend, industry executives said during a meeting in Beijing in May. But the industry is still trying to recover from a disastrous year in 2009, when the wealth generated by global travel and tourism fell by 4.8 percent.