Finland hopes Chinese will take tourism out of freezer

Throngs of Chinese holidaymakers would converge on the city of Rovaniemi in the Arctic Circle to visit Santa Claus's main post office to send Christmas cards with special postmarks or wait to check in at the glass-roofed igloos for Northern Lights-spotting. That was in normal times.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the capital of Lapland, in northern Finland, very hard, and its usual stream of visitors from China has all but dried up.

Sanna Karkkainen, managing director of Visit Rovaniemi, estimates that the lack of tourists from China in 2020 cost the local economy around a third of its revenue.