A view of the Santa Village in Finland
© AFP/File Gael Branchereau

HELSINKI (AFP) - "I don't believe the flow of tourists to Finnish Lapland will end, but we should prepare for the fact that growth will stop and the number of visitors might even fall," Santa Park chief executive Wille Rajala told AFP.

"The financial crisis will impact Lapland tourism, although maybe not this year," Tuula Rintala-Gardin, the director of tourism in the northern Finnish town of Rovaniemi, agreed.

"There is some uncertainty and growth is not expected" this year, she told AFP.

At Rovaniemi's Christmas theme park, the season is nonetheless in full swing, teeming mainly with families with children eager to meet Santa and his elves.

In 2007, almost one million tourists visited Finnish Lapland above the Arctic Circle, 360,000 of whom were foreigners, mainly from Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway and Russia, according to the regional council of Lapland.

During the holiday season alone last year some 110,000 foreign tourists visited Lapland. This year, the number is expected to be only slightly lower at around 100,000.

More than 500 international flights will take tourists to northern Finland this December, a drop of about 16 percent from last year, according to airport service company Finavia.

Despite the expected dip in flight numbers, tourism companies insist there have been few cancellations.

"International deals are made well in advance. A large number of deals were made last spring. We have not received many cancellations," said Johanna Tolonen, who heads up Villi Pohjola, a company that organises activities such as snowmobiling, skiing and reindeer rides for tourists.

Santa Park too is fully booked each weekend this December.

"We are so close to Christmastime that only a catastrophe could change international tour operators' plans," Rajala said.

But with the increasing global economic uncertainty expected to prompt more people to choose cheaper holidays or skip travel altogether, tourism firms are bracing for a challenging year in 2009.

"In recent years tourism in Lapland has risen sharply every year," Tolonen said, adding that tourism numbers could slip back to where they were several years ago.

©AFP