Visit Finland, the Finnish tourist board in India, has appointed Bollywood actress Gul Panag as the honorary brand ambassador in India. This announcement was made during a pre-Christmas celebration held recently in Embassy of Finland in New Delhi. Arto Asiakainen, Head Asia Market, Visit Finland said that appointing Gul Panag as the brand ambassador will help Finland receive more travellers from India in the future.

Talking about her priorities as the brand ambassador Gul Panag said that she will share her personal tourism experiences in Finland to Indian travellers. From India, Finland is accessible by Finnair and the duration of the flight is six and half hours. Since English is widely spoken in Finland, Indians wouldn’t have a problem in communicating among the locals.

Elaborating on the special focus for promoting Finland as a tourist destination in India next year, Asiakainen said that the tourism board is planning to organise seminars for the travel trade in Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Chennai, as well as educational tours to Finland for the media.

Besides seminars, it will also organise workshops in New Delhi and Mumbai, its traditional inbound markets. These workshops will be attended by large group of Finnish tourism suppliers. He added that India is the third biggest inbound market in Asia for Finland after Japan and China and is expecting India to be the first by next year (2011). From January 2010 to October, 2010, the destination received 56,000 overnights from India which is a 17 per cent increase compared to same period last year.

Terhi Hakala, Ambassador, Embassy of Finland said that the highlight of the destination is a visit to Rovaniemi, the home of Santa Claus where Santa has its own post office and village. The destination offers various activities such as hiking, trekking, berry picking, rafting and nature walks.