After our evening on the cruise we arrived in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Estonia joined the European Union in 2004. Previously, the country had been occupied by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during the war. The country has been through a lot and so have the people. There is some gentrification happening in Tallin to give the city an uplift. We were lucky enough to stay near Old Town. It had a lot of historic buildings, restaurants and shops.
We stayed at the Nordic Hotel Forum. The rooms were larger than what we have experienced in previous stays. The customer service in Tallin was not as good as in the previous cities we had visited. The employees were not as helpful as they were in Sweden. With a large and comfortable lobby many of us on this trip took advantage of it and hang out there. This hotel did offer a gym, however it did not open till 7:00 am which did on fit into our business schedule. There were a few travel groups in the hotel as well. That made us wonder why there were so many people on the cruise to Estonia and lots of people in the hotel? What was Estonia’s appeal? We asked a young person from Canada who said because Estonia is so inexpensive compared to the surrounding countries, they come here to party and purchase alcohol.
Old town Tallinn
In 2014, according to Statistics Estonia data, a total of 1.6 million tourists overnighted in Tallinn, which was 52% of all the tourists that visited Estonia. Of these, foreign tourists totalled 1,412,001 (88%) and domestic tourists 191,203 (12%). Based on data from Statistics Estonia, the average stay for tourists in Tallinn in 2014 was 1.78 nights. The longest stays were in January (2.02 nights) and the shortest in November (1.72 nights).
Many tourists come to Tallin for conferences and events. According to the data entered in www.meetings.ee, a database on conference events, 4,321 conference events occurred in Tallinn in 2014 of which 1,256 were international in nature (i.e. at least 20% of the participants were foreigners). In 2014, 244,764 people participated in the events, of which 48,399 were foreigners. Three-quarters (76%) of the conferences in Tallinn are one-day events. Most of the conferences take place in the spring and autumn; the top months were March and October.
Tallinn is a popular destination for the cruise ships sailing the Baltic Sea: in 2014, cruise ships stopped in Tallinn on 297 occasions with a total of 479,026 cruise passengers. Of the cruise passengers that visited Tallinn, 25% were from Germany; 18% from the US, 14% from Great Britain, 5% from Spain, 5% from Canada, 5% from Italy, 3% from Australia, 3% from France and the remaining 22% from 147 other countries. In 2014, the 1,603,204 tourists that stayed at Tallinn’s accommodation establishments were visiting for many reasons: vacationers 74% (1,176,840), business travellers 20% (332,997), conference attendees 4% (61,048) and 2% (32,319) for other reasons.
Mollie enjoyed seeing Queen in Tallinn at an outdoor theatre
