Finland’s tourist season in the north kicked off on Saturday when the first charter planes arrived for the holidays. The latest figures indicate that 180 charter planes are scheduled to fly into the Rovaniemi Airport in the next few weeks, with over 200 headed to the smaller Kittilä Airport near the Levi ski resort. A total of 503 charter planes have announced that they will be bringing passengers to the unspoiled nature of Lapland this month.
Rovaniemi Airport director Johan Juujärvi says traffic at his airport will reach a peak on December 17th, when 23 separate charter planes are expected throughout the day, in addition to their regularly scheduled routes.
For in addition to the charter traffic, several international carriers will be operating flights to Lapland through the winter. Norwegian has flights twice a week connecting London with Rovaniemi, while Monarch airlines will fly between London, Manchester and Kittilä.
The German airline Lufthansa will be flying a route between Munich and Kittilä, in addition to a Frankfurt-Ivalo connection. Germania offers routes that connect Berlin and Zurich with Rovaniemi and Dusselfdorf with Kittilä.
The national carrier Finnair also recently announced that it will be using larger planes to service its routes to the Lapland destinations of Ivalo, Kemi, Kittilä, Kuusamo and Rovaniemi.
Brits are #1 tourist group
Most Christmas tourists spend more than one day in Rovaniemi these days, different from in the 1980s, when most tourists from Britain, for example, would make just a day trip. Today the typical stay averages at 3 to 4 days.
British citizens make up the largest group of tourists heading to Lapland this winter, followed by the French and Italians. In 2015 the largest groups visiting Finland from Asia arrived from Singapore, then China, then Japan.