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The Levi Times

Travel Newspaper

Spring 2010  

Spring in Lapland beckons

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Welcome to Levi and Fell Lapland!
The early springtime is a time when the vey best tourist services are made available. There’s a whole host of things to do on the cross-country skiing trails, routes, restaurants, hotels, cabins, saunas, events and with an enormous number of other activities.
Anyone can take their own safari, short or long. The safari can just as well be to the nearest sledging hill or perhaps far beyond the fells to Norway or Sweden. Maybe even to a restaurant or bar. Here, excellent food is prepared for different tastes. Of course everyone is welcome to the tourist place of worship, the fell resort’s own chapel, which is open daily in Levi and Ylläs.
The Levi Times tells about the services in the region. The newspaper also has details on the people of the area, its traditions and nature.

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How do you want to travel over the snow? 
Would you like to sit in a sledge with someone pulling you? What about taking a husky sled team, snowmobile, reindeer or kick-sled? In Finnish terms you do not actually ride a kick-sled, as you merely kick with one leg to propel the sled forward. A bicycle, however, may be ridden, even though you have to use both your legs to be able to keep it going. Bicycles may also be used during the winter months. Some more extreme cycling fanatics actually jump their bikes off the ski jumps. Will you choose downhill skiing, tour skating, snowshoe hiking or cross-country skiing? Horse riding is also possible throughout the year. In the winter, horse riding is especially thrilling in the snowy forests. The horse knows what snow is and how it affects walking, trotting and galloping.

Charters and scheduled flights from Europe to Kittilä during early spring
During the early spring, Kittilä welcomes eight charter and schedule flights a week from Europe.  The majority of planes fly in from the United Kingdom. Saturday sees charter flights from Zürich and London and the Finnish owned Blue1 has a scheduled flight from Paris. On Sundays charter flights arrive from Manchester, Gatwick and Bristol. The Europe Air Post charter flight arrives from Paris and the Tui Arker Fly scheduled flight from Amsterdam.
Charter flights also fly in from Kiev and Moscow. Domestic flights to Kittilä arrive from Helsinki, Turku and Tampere. 
There are around forty scheduled domestic flights from South Finland to Kittilä every week.
The Helsinki – Kittilä service is operated by Finnair and Blue1. Finnair has 20 – 25 weekly flights, while Blue1 has around ten flights each week.
The Finnish airline company Finncom flies to Kittilä from Tampere and Turku on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Finncom also flies between Helsinki and Enontekiö on Saturdays during the early spring.
Kittilä Airport serves the holiday resorts of Levi, Ylläs and Muonio. Trips to Enontekiö also often use Kittilä Airport.

396 Christmas charters arrive in Lapland – Kittilä the busiest airport
Kittilä was Lapland’s busiest Lappish Christmas destination. A total of 156 foreign planes were welcomed in December. This figure includes the weekly scheduled flights from Amsterdam and Paris. Rovaniemi was second busiest with 145 Christmas flights. With the numbers of passengers Kittilä was far ahead with 41,686 compared to Rovaniemi’s
37, 299 visitors. The decrease in passenger numbers for Rovaniemi was 34.8 percent compared to 2008. The drop for Kittilä was 23.9 percent.
Lapland welcomed a total of 396 Christmas flights, which represents a fall of 20 percent compared to the previous year. December saw 38 charter flights for Ivalo, 41 for Enontekiö and 17 for Kuusamo.
Of the Christmas tourists, there are now more who stay for a number of days. The deduction of one day of travel products is one reason for the drop in the number of flights to Rovaniemi, as Rovaniemi does not have much accommodation, only providing beds for 3,500 visitors. Correspondingly, the impact region for Kittilä Airport offers 40,000 – 45,000 beds.
“With the number of passengers, we fell behind last year by 23.9 percent, which was a figure that was pretty much expected. We were rather optimistic with our expectations, so we fared pretty well”, says Kittilä Airport’s General Manager Kari Tohmo.
In 2008, Kittilä saw 178 charter flights. The biggest number of Christmas charter flights was in 2007 with 221 planes. At that time, Rovaniemi welcomed 240 Christmas charters.
During early spring, the flight traffic is at its busiest in Kittilä. Flights arrive from Helsinki, Turku and Tampere. Around ten charter and scheduled flights fly in from abroad each week. The Blue1 services from Moscow and Düsseldorf will start up during the winter.

The fell resorts keep construction going
Construction continues in the holiday resorts of Fell Lapland and remains busy in the other parts of the tourist regions despite the economic climate. Last year, the municipalities of Kittilä and Kolari saw the issuing of 608 permit decisions relating to construction and extensions.
In Kittilä, the council made 353 permit decisions, which included the actual construction permits, extensions, supplementary constructions and landscaping work permits. These new permits cover a floor space of 50,000 square metres. Tourism construction comprises holiday homes and new services. The most construction activity is naturally seen in Levi, with the focuses being the expansion of spa and hotel for Hotel Levitunturi, and the YIT holiday apartment block, Levi Chalets 1 that will be completed on the Koutalaki area of the fell slope.

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