Santa Tourism Superpower

Four days in Lapland can cost as much as a fortnight in the Caribbean, but it's worth it.

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By Ritva Liisa Snellman in Kittilä
     
      They are everywhere you look. Red gnome-hats, as worn by Santa and his little helpers, are easily the most common headgear on view at Kittilä Airport. They come in all shapes and flavours. Dark red, pinkish, rich fire-engine red, with long pointy bits, short pointy bits, woolly pom-poms on the end, bells-on, bell-free...
      Every time a new group of tourists spills out of the area by the passport-control booths, the swarm of local guides starts up in chorus: "This way, please." The same follow-me shepherd's call is repeated outside the terminal building: "This way, please!"
     
Roughly every ten minutes, a plane arrives at the small airport in Kittilä from Britain and Ireland. The guides try to get their own flocks out from under before the next group is disgorged from their Airbus or 757.
      The day-trippers to Lapland are directed to change their relatively flimsy outer garments for heavy-duty snowmobile overalls. Those staying overnight are whisked off to their hotels.
      "Figgy Pudding, this way, please!" cries bus-gnome Kirsti Puro (red hood, pointy, but no bell), waving in the direction of a luxury coach that has been booked for a group travelling under this name. The Snowdrops, Snowflakes, Jingle Bells, and Mistletoes all head to their own designated buses.
     
"It's still pretty quiet for now, but in a week the flood-gates will burst", says Arto Kanerva, CEO of Levin Safarit [Levi Safaris].
      His company has been providing programme services for incoming tourists for more than a decade.
      Kanerva is waiting for the arrival of a Monarch Airlines charter flight, MON9048, which is coming in from London Gatwick with a load of 235 Britons on a 7-hour jaunt to Lapland.
      It is just one of the short winter day's 23 charter arrivals.
     
When the plane is safely down and rolling towards the terminal, Kanerva pulls out his phone and passes the information on to drivers, restaurants, and to the programme team waiting at the foot of the nearby Levitunturi Fell.
      The flight - and the whistle-stop programme - is 22 minutes late.
     
In the past few years, December has become a busy tourism month.
      Some travellers are escaping Christmas, but on the other hand there are plenty who want to get themselves tuned in to the Yuletide wavelength with a short getaway trip. The Christmas spirit can be fortified by a bit of shopping or adventure.
      The Christmas-shopper trips carry people to the Weihnachtsmarkt [Advent Market, Christmas Market] events in cities across Central Europe. These seasonal markets, decendants of fairs from the Middle Ages, are sold to foreigners as authentic and original Christmas events, offering the chance to stroll around, soak up the atmosphere, and collect local delicacies, traditional ornaments, and original gifts.
     
The cities compete quite fiercely for the tourists' custom. For example, Vienna boasts proudly that it is Europe's leading Christmas city, but Munich relies on its sheer scale to hold the line against its Austrian rival. Germany's largest Weihnachtsmarkt draws in around 3 million visitors from home and abroad.
      This year the markets in the German towns and cities are expecting an aggregate of something like 160 million visitors. The sweet, sickly scent of Glühwein - the Germanic equivalent of the ubiquitous Glögg or mulled wine found under various names across Scandinavia - hangs in the air above the market stalls from late November right through to Christmas Eve itself.
      Ambience-shoppers are also highly sought after up in the north. Stockholm's century-old Christmas Market at Skansen is advertised across the water in Finland.
      The stalls and Christmas delicacies in the Town Hall Square in Tallinn first appeared five years ago, and at the same time the city unilaterally declared itself the Nordic Christmas Capital. Pärnu (in Estonia) and Riga (the Latvian capital) have contented themselves with the more modest title of "Baltic Christmas City".
     
At the same time as these Yuletide cities tussle one with another over which is the most atmospheric and worth a visit, Finnish Lapland has grabbed for itself a sizeable chunk of the world's gnome-tourism market.
      Theme parks have been set up around the subject of Christmas and Santa Claus in the United States, Canada, Japan, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden, but it is only in Lapland where the number of tourists has been growing steadily from one year to the next.
      The great majority of the visitors come for their Christmas trips on charter flights, and a very large share of them are from the British Isles.
     
Christmas trips to Lapland got going around twenty years ago. The numbers have soared upwards faster than Santa in his sleigh.
      Whereas a decade ago there were 120 Christmas season flights and around 15,000 tourists, in 2005 the number of visitors was already ten times as many. This year, the airports in the region are anticipating as many as 560 charter planes bearing large groups of tourists.
      What once was a quiet and - to be honest - a rather shunned month has now become second only to the late winter/early spring skiing season for Lapland's travel entrepreneurs.
     
When the region's governor Asko Oinas stood up in 1985 and announced that Lapland was henceforth Finland's Christmas Province, there were quite a few sniggers. Hey, come on, Asko, foreigners aren't going to be interested in the Finnish Christmas...
      But that was then. The travel gurus came up with instant-Xmas getaway trips tailored to the British taste, and word began to spread: it's a neat idea to take the kids up to Finland - that's where the real Santa lives, you know.
      In truth, spending four days in Finnish Lapland will make as big a dent in your credit card as a fortnight in the Caribbean, but it is worth it.
     
The tourism innovation strategy was ingenious and practically fireproof. Christmas comes every year, and every year there are new British children who reach the critical age for the Santa Claus experience.
      Not even some minor scandals over poor service that were written up in the British press in a few Decembers have actually caused any real dip in demand.
      At the same time, a whole new sub-species of entrepreneur has come into being in Finnish Lapland: the tourist entertainers.
      Since the Brits wanted to be entertained as well as to see snow, reindeer, and "The Man", a range of fun pursuits had to be put together.
      The result is that Lapland now has dozens and dozens of snowmobile safari and programme services outfits of varying sizes, which provide employment to hundreds of locals during the Christmas season and later on during the peak skiing months from February through to early April.
      This is not a nickels and dimes operation, either: in 2004, revenue from these programme activities already accounted for a fifth of Lapland's EUR 377 million in tourism income.
     
Little wonder, then, that Sweden's tourism authorities and the businesses in the branch practically went onto a war footing in the autumn. If the Finns have managed to make a successful peak season out of the chilly gloom of December, how come this hasn't been possible in Sweden?
      Thus far at least, the major offensive launched by our neighbours to the west has not produced the desired results. Last Sunday, nearly 6,000 Britons landed in Kittilä alone, while over in the traditional Swedish Christmas resort of Tomteland (between Falun and Mora in Central Sweden, and also known as Santaworld) things were rather dead.
      Only a thousand or so Swedish tourists had made the trip to Mora to lift their Christmas cheer.
      Up in Swedish Lapland, it was quieter still. The airport at Kiruna (more or less due west from Kittilä and likewise well above the Arctic Circle) had welcomed only a handful of scheduled flights all day, and the region's biggest tourist draw - the Ice Hotel at Jukkasjärvi - had tempted in just 135 guests.
      "This is not an easy game", is Arto Kanerva's response to talk of the Swedish aims of competition. He does not sound unduly concerned.
     
To some extent, Finland has geography on its side. Swedish Lapland is sparsely populated, there is just the one airport capable of taking jets, and the ski-resorts are mostly small affairs.
      In Finnish Lapland the basic services are up to speed: five airports, large fell resort centres with classy accommodation, and the right sort of partners who can arrange quality programming for the visitors.
      And the programme has to be good, as the Christmas tourist wants a quick hit: he or she wants to see, do, and experience as much as possible in a very short space of time.
     
Arto Kanerva has worked together with the same British travel operator for seventeen years.
      This season they will be sending nearly 6,000 tourists his way. Every detail has to be meticulously planned and tested in advance. A day-trip outing like this costs the client 425 euros, and nobody can afford to put in a slipshod performance.
      When the aircraft's wheels leave the ground in England, Kanerva gets an instant report of how many tourists are incoming, their names, how old and how tall they are, how much they weigh, and what size shoe they take.
     
Overalls and winter boots of the correct size are ready and waiting, laid out neatly in alphabetical order in an empty parking hall at the airport. The tourists go through passport control and come in one door, dress in the necessary gear, walk out through another door, and get straight onto their buses.
      Within half an hour, half of them will be tobogganing down Taalovaara, looking at reindeer, and being driven around in sleds pulled by teams of huskies.
      Meanwhile, the other half of the group will be getting up close and personal with The Big Bearded One at Santa's Post Office.
      The timetable is measured in the minutes, but things have to look and feel as though there is all the time in the world. Lunch is eaten at the Levitunturi ski-resort, and after that the two groups swap places and programmes.
     
Kanerva constantly keeps a discreet watchful eye on the way things are going.
      If the temperature is down well below freezing - and even in the present odd climate situation it can quite easily be -20°C in Lapland at this time of year - it is necessary to ensure that foreigners unused to such extremes do not go and get themselves frostbitten.
      When it is warmer, the big problem is slipperiness underfoot. And all the time you have to make sure that the group stays together and there are no stragglers to get lost.
      "No, we've never lost anyone".
     
Santa Claus is on a coffee-break. The gnomes at the Post Office clear up Santa's parlour after the last group that just left. There are gingerbread cookie crumbs on the table, and some bits of wrapping paper strewn on the floor. One of the gnomes adds a little gingerbread essence to a scented candle. In a quarter of an hour, the last guests of the evening will be making their appearance.
      What they will see is a red wooden house in the forest, and one of the rooms is occupied by Santa himself. What they do not know is that in the 1960s this attractive building was a perfectly ordinary Lappish farmhouse that made a livelihood out of forestry work and raising cattle.
      Four years ago it went the way of many another Lappish location: it became a "tourist theatre", with the owners Tuomo and Leena Linnala and the tourists all performing according to a script drawn up by Tuomo Linnala himself.
     
As tourists in general become increasingly demanding in their call for authentic experiences, where Christmas is concerned they are not prepared to cut corners in their requirements for the genuine article.
      The Christmas idyll that has been created in the house and the farmyard is as real as Santa himself. And the Post Office Santa is the real deal. He's been on courses and he's got all the details of the famous brand down pat. His beard and wig are made of yak hair, his impressive belly is silicone wool, and his outfit is exactly the right shade of red, with black and white trimmings.
      The phone rings at Santa Central. A guide announces that the group are on the road will soon be arriving. Santa Claus disappears into his study and prepares himself for the evening's task. His opening line is easy enough: a cheery bass-baritone "Hello". He will be delivering this greeting to around 5,000 visitors this year.
     
By the time that the headlights of the buses come into view around the edge of the forest, the gnomes are already on station in their workshop in the farmyard outbuildings.
      Pyry Poikjärvi sets about painting a carved wooden knife a nice shade of orange. At nine years of age, Pyry is a Christmas tourism professional: this is his third year of doing gigs at the Linnala household.
     
This is the climax of the day, the big number of the Christmas trip, and everyone knows precisely what they have to do.
      The children line up with their parents, waiting for a word or two with Santa, gift wishes are scribbled into the visitors' book, camera flashes go off, and everyone is a little bit tingly with excitement.
      Suddenly all the rushing around of earlier in the day is past. Nobody seems to be in any kind of hurry to go anywhere.
      When all the sights of Santa's home have been explored and the guides have played games with the children, all the visitors are gathered in the yard and sit down on the drifted and piled-up snow.
      Parents and grandparents watch as children spin around and around on a sledge attached to a central pole, and the teenagers - yes, there are some of them along, too - hang out in the snow in flat-out beach poses, staring up at the Lapland night sky.
      They scratch Santa's friendly dogs behind the ears, and chat about the experiences of the trip - outdoor loos, the food, the snow, and the eery bluish-white kaamos daylight, the flipside of the summer midnight sun.
      Quite clearly, the Christmas spirit is working its way into them.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 17.12.2006


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Tourists have to make do with man-made snow in Finnish Lapland (5.12.2006)
  Record number of flights set to arrive in Lapland during Christmas season (26.10.2004)

Links:
  Santa´s Post Office in Levi
  Lapland Portal
  The Opposition - Santaworld, Sweden
  Kittilä Airport - at this time of year, a veritable Santa hub

RITVA LIISA SNELLMAN / Helsingin Sanomat
ritva.liisa.snellman@hs.fi