Christmas in danger: Santa's home in Lapland is affected by the pandemic

ROVANIEMI, Finland (Reuters) – Christmas is just around the corner, but in Santa Claus's home village in northern Finland, the COVID pandemic has kept the hordes of tourists who normally start celebrating in Rovaniemi at this time of year away.

Despite low infection rates, Finland has imposed some of the strictest travel restrictions in Europe, meaning most foreigners cannot enter the country.

In northern Finland, where many businesses rely on tourists flying in to meet Santa Claus, see the Northern Lights or go on a snowmobile safari, visitor numbers have dropped dramatically.

In August 2020, the number of foreign tourists was 78% lower than the previous year, according to industry data from Business Finland.

“For local businesses, Christmas is definitely in danger,” said Sanna Karkkainen, managing director of the tourist association Visit Rovaniemi. “Christmas itself will come, but how merry it will be is the question mark.”

Finland avoided the worst effects of the pandemic in the spring by opting for a strict lockdown that included isolating the capital, Helsinki.

Now, as in much of Europe, infections are rising again, reaching a daily record earlier this month, and the government is considering new measures to contain the spread of the virus.

In total, almost 13,000 COVID-19 infections have been reported so far in the country of 5.5 million inhabitants, including 346 deaths.

When Santa Claus greets children from behind a Plexiglas pane and elves wear masks, the Christmas spirit is no longer really there.

At travel company Safarctica, which offers snowmobile tours and ice swimming, sales manager Antti Antikainen expects bookings to fall by 50 to 80 percent this year. “I think it's more like 80 percent,” he adds.

Tourism-oriented businesses, which employ around 8 percent of the region's people, have already started laying off staff and many have little hope that the Christmas season can be saved unless the government eases some of its travel restrictions soon.

“At the moment my answer would be that Christmas is cancelled,” said Harri Mallinen, who runs the Apukka Resort in Rovaniemi.

(In this story, the reference to quarantines in paragraph 2 is removed.)

(Reporting by Attila Cser in Rovaniemi, additional reporting by Tarmo Virki in Tallinn; Editing by Simon Johnson and Gareth Jones)