Travel
The three tourist voyages in July and August with Russia's powerful nuclear icebreaker "50 Let Pobedy" will not take place due to the COVID-19 situation.
25 charging stations across the county of Troms and Finnmark will make even the remotest corners reachable in cold winter climate for electric car drivers.
"We get port call cancellations to Longyearbyen every day now," says Assisting Harbor Master Rikhart Olsen Ingerø. Norway's ban on most international visitors is extended to August 20 and includes Svalbard.
Cross-border traveling will not resume any time soon.
No spring in the north: European route E6 to Finnmark is closed due to snowy storms and alternative drive through Finland is not allowed with closed borders.
2020 was the year when many new-built luxury polar classed cruise ships were supposed to bring wealthy tourists to the Arctic. The start of the season couldn’t be worse.
About 150,000 m2 of snow will be preserved for next season with new cover techniques.
Finnish tourism destinations are turning to virtual tourism to get around travel restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Trine Baddari and her family spent years building the BIRK husky as a successful wilderness brand in the Pasvik valley. Coronavirus puts its future at stake.
Demand for air travel is essentially non-existent due to the coronavirus outbreak and airlines like SAS, Norwegian and Widerøe have therefore decided to put most of its flights on hold.
Low-cost airline Norwegian says coronavirus disrupts demand for tickets and stops flying to Umeå, Luleå, Alta and Kirkenes.
The number of tourists visiting Finnish Lapland grew by 12.5 percent in January compared to the same period last year, according to preliminary data released by Statistics Finland on Thursday.
Siste/ mest lest
Few places in Europe are better suited for commercial scheduled flights with electric planes than Norway’s northernmost region.
Visitors will soon be welcomed to the northernmost tip of the closed and militarized Russian archipelago.
Longyearbyen is a small and vulnerable society. We only have a small hospital with limited public health services, the local authorities states.
Hotel Meridian on the central square in Murmansk is closed after a preliminary test from one participant in a chess tournament was positive for coronavirus.
"I firmly believe it is the only responsible decision in the extraordinary crisis the world is currently facing," says Hurtigruten CEO Daniel Skjeldam
Authorities say people should be responsible and consider whether travelling makes sense during the coronavirus outbreak.
Last day of skiing: All major ski resorts in northern Finland announced on Sunday that they will close the lifts.
Next weekend is the last chance to fly north to Ivalo, Kittilä and Kuusamo with the Finnish national carrier.
First coronavirus case in northern Finland triggers big headlines. In Murmansk, incoming tourists are expected to be down 80 percent in February.
The travel industry goes green and the north is no exception when tour-busses aims for zero emission.
2019 became the year when hotels in Tromsø in average earned more per room than hotels Oslo. Winter tourism is a major reason.
“The tourists care about their green impact, so the business is obvious,” says Agnes Árnadóttir, co-founder of the Polar tour operator that sails towards an emission-free future.
Nornickel might invest up to 10,5 billion rubles (€153 million) in the development of a tourism cluster in Pechenga, the municipality located along border to Norway and Finland.
Eight superchargers will open in 2020 inside the Arctic Circle of Norway, Finland and Sweden.
Officials with Murmansk airport could just before Christmas celebrate that more than one million passengers had passed through the airport in 2019.
The tour operator pays respect to local indigenous culture.
New for the summer is Bodø with two flights per week directly from Helsinki.
Lapland tourism players are divided over a proposal to mitigate carbon emissions by introducing a flight tax. On Thursday, a citizens’ initiative aimed at implementing a tax passed the 50,000-signature threshold required for lawmakers to consider it. It notes that a similar scheme already in place in neighbouring Sweden adds between six and 40 euros to most airfares.
The new route is the first long distance to Rovaniemi and the local tourism hope it will bring more visitors from the Middle East.
The initiative, along with a ban on heavy fuel oil, is welcomed by both locals in Longyearbyen and Arctic expedition cruise operators.
Christmas time is peak season for airports in northern Finland. Rovaniemi sees about 150.000 passengers in December compared with 30.000 in June.
Lapland:
Plans for the Republic of Santa Claus theme park north of Rovaniemi include a giant transparent dome with round-the-year artificial snowfall and northern lights, gingerbread houses, a tall Christmas-tree formed hotel and the world’s biggest sauna village.
Murmansk and Barentsburg could become vital ports for a new series of Russian medium-sized luxury ships aimed for grabbing a share of the booming Arctic expedition tourist market.
