In this year’s Seatrade Cruise Global fair, Estonia and Finland present their top cruise destinations jointly – ranging from cultural programmes of Tallinn and Helsinki to new destinations and their attractions both in Estonia and Finland, says press center of Port of Tallinn.
In the Estonian capital Tallinn 2016 is celebrated as the Year of Maritime Culture, which brings numerous events and programmes to the visitors throughout the season. Focus is on everything maritime – the city’s guests are introduced to Tallinn’s seaside attractions, invited to open air galleries and exhibitions and offered culinary enjoyment in several restaurants and bars.
In the Old City Harbour of Tallinn, improvement works are conducted for updating the infrastructure. With those improvements, both passengers, service providers and cruise operators will have more convenient access to and from the port.
Other top destinations in Estonia are the island of Saaremaa and resort city Pärnu. This year marks the tenth anniversary of opening the Saaremaa cruise quay. To this date, 20 different cruise operators have offered more than 35 000 passengers the opportunity to visit this former Viking stronghold island, the most popular tourism destination for both tourists and Estonian residents.
Pärnu as a new and unexplored destination in southwestern Estonia is a classical small resort town, summer capital of Estonia with its numerous restaurants and large sandy beaches – everything a visitor expects from a short citybreak.
What Estonia can offer, the joint stand’s other party Finland compliments with its Nordic touch and activities. Cruise Finland introduces its wide network of attractions to the visitors – ranging from shops, recreational facilities to other cruise destinations in Finland beside Helsinki. The partner destinations are: Helsinki, Turku, Mariehamn, Kotka, Kemi, Rauma.
In capital Helsinki, one of the top attractions this year is a new wellness and design sauna complex Löyly opening on the seaside. Guests can enjoy new kinds of sauna experiences beside the sea in a cool urban milieu.
For visualizing the close-knit relationship as well as healthy competition between the two cruise destinations, Estonia and Finland offer the guests to use the “diplomatic Ping-Pong” table. Dividing the table and acting as a net are the skylines of two capitals – Tallinn on one side and Helsinki on the other. When the ball is put into play, it symbolizes a cruise vessel connecting with each other the boroughs of Talsinki.
Also worth to note is that with Ping-Pong table, sustainability was as important as its attractiveness - it is constructed from materials such as cardboard, paper and wood which are also local and native for both countries.