The winter season started in October, earlier than ever. The pre-corona record for visitor numbers in 2019 looks set to be broken this winter.
– The season has started earlier than ever before. The Christmas holiday season has already started at the end of October. The year 2022 is about to catch up with 2019, which was the best year ever for tourism in Lapland,” says Sanna Kärkkäinen, CEO of Visit Rovaniemi.
Local tourism entrepreneurs have told Kärkkäinen that they “do Saturday every day”. So there have been busy, busy days all season long this season.
This is due to the fact that demand has stagnated since the korona period and that Lapland is the number one destination of choice for those who want to travel.
– We dream of Rovaniemi as a destination for winter and Christmas, Kärkkäinen reflects.
Twice as many scheduled flights to Rovaniemi as last year
In addition, air traffic has increased to a record this year: Rovaniemi can now be reached by scheduled flights from twice as many cities as before.
– There are now more scheduled flights to Rovaniemi than ever before. Now we have 11 direct connections, five or six of which are new routes, CEO Sanna Kärkkäinen from Visit Rovaniemi says.
According to Kärkkäinen, the absence of Russian and Chinese tourists has been replaced by European and American tourists.
– The strong market is in Europe: Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and of course the British as a very large group of tourists, especially at Christmas. The United States can be highlighted as a special feature of this season, which will certainly be visible due to Finnair’s good flight connections.