Major foreign travel agencies have begun canceling bus tours to southeastern Finland’s Lake Saimaa region en masse, according to Yle.
The companies consider the risk of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) entering Finnish airspace to be a security threat.
Armi Hatakka, manager of the castle-like Imatran Valtionhotelli hotel in Imatra, reported that organized bus groups from European countries virtually stopped visiting the area in the summer of 2026
She noted, however, that the threat posed by drones deterred only major tour operators. Individual foreign travelers continued to visit the region on their own.
With Russians no longer visiting the Finnish border region, Germans have become the largest group of foreign tourists there. The number of overnight stays by tourists from Germany in Imatra more than doubled, reaching 2,400 over the summer.
Since the tourist influx from Russia ceased, the number of foreign tourists in the region has been declining for the fifth consecutive year, and domestic tourists are not enough to sustain the growth of local businesses, the article notes.
Since May of this year, the Finnish military has regularly imposed restrictions in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland and closed the airspace to aircraft due to Ukraine’s attacks on neighboring regions of Russia.
Preparing for the possible arrival of UAVs in Finnish airspace has become a standard part of planning for all major events in the country. Finns have been advised to be prepared for threats from drones throughout the country, though it was noted that the risks are higher near the border with Russia.
In Latvia, the local tourism industry described the situation in the sector as catastrophic: Ukrainian drones have scared off all the tourists. Mass cancellations of trips to the eastern part of the country began in the spring, and the summer season as a whole fell short of expectations.
SOURCE: “Foreign tour groups are cancelling trips to Finland due to drone threats,” Delovoi Peterburg, 20 October 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader
