LAPLAND SAFARIS

The turnover of the Lapland Safaris group during the past financial year was exceptionally good, even exceeding the previous record year of 2018–2019. Tremendous growth was seen in customer volumes during the year: for example, Santa Claus Office welcomed nearly 400,000 visitors and the total number of customer service transactions in experience services exceeded half a million. This represented growth of approximately 100,000 customers for both. In the European tourism market, interest in nature has remained high even after the pandemic. During the winter season, the largest customer volumes came from the UK, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain.

Achieving the milestone of 40 years of operations was naturally one of the highlights of the year, and we celebrated it together with our personnel, long-term partners and former employees. In connection with this, the baton of chief executive was passed from Jyrki Niva to Rami Korhonen. It was particularly pleasing that the peak season during the anniversary year began and was completed without continuous uncertainty: the post-pandemic impacts appeared to be well and truly behind us.

The importance of sustainability is growing further

Our main challenges during the season were mainly related to the low snowfall and warm weather conditions in early December, paired with higher-than-expected growth in demand and volume. Even though we increased our recruitment for the winter season by as much as 18 per cent compared to the previous season, we still had a shortage of professionals. We employed a total of 730 people during the season. They deserve a great deal of credit for their flexibility and willingness to put in long days in spite of the challenges of the busy season.

We can be particularly satisfied with the fact that, in spite of the busy record-breaking season, we kept our customer satisfaction at a very good level while improving employee satisfaction. At the same time, we continued to implement our sustainability programme; for example, we created a more comprehensive animal welfare programme and animal welfare criteria for our husky farms.

Demand in Lapland is set to remain strong in the upcoming winter season. A record-high number of direct scheduled European flights will arrive in Rovaniemi next winter. Our operational development efforts will be focused increasingly on snowless periods and sustainable tourism. These efforts will be helped by electric snowmobiles, for example, and the productisation of electric bicycles will also create new opportunities in the areas with national parks.

In the long term, new technologies may present new opportunities as battery technology, for instance, becomes more resilient to winter conditions. For customers, sustainability is becoming an increasingly significant criterion in choosing a service provider. Going forward, we will focus even more broadly on sustainability by taking into account the full range of ESG perspectives, including not only environmental impacts but also the social and economic impacts of our activities.