Paul Carter, Hotelplan UK chief executive, said: “It is with great sadness that we have regretfully made the extremely difficult decision to suspend all trips to Santa’s Lapland in December 2020.
"We know that this will come as an enormous disappointment to our customers, therefore it is not a decision we have taken lightly. Despite tremendous efforts by our partners in Finland to find a way to allow travel to Lapland to go ahead this December, there are still a number of conditions in place, which are not easily overcome.
"Above all, we know a trip to see Santa is a once in a lifetime experience and we want to ensure that it’s as magical as our customers expect it to be. Over the past few months we’ve been continually reviewing what the Santa experience will look like for families this year and listening to our customer’s concerns.
"Our top priority has always been to keep everyone safe and in order to do this, we would have to make some changes to the holiday experience. We felt that those changes would impact too much on the magical experience.
"For those customers who have been impacted, we hope they will choose to join us next year to visit Santa and his elves, but if not, and they wish to receive a refund, we will arrange this instead.”
While physical 2020 trips will no longer go ahead, Santa’s Lapland are offering families the chance to meet the real Santa over video call — live from Lapland, in the safety of their living room.
The 10-minute video call will prove its genuine Lapland credentials, as an elf leads the family through the snow and gets up-close with a reindeer, before going live to Santa’s cabin for a personalised meeting with Santa himself.
A personalised ‘Santa, Live from Lapland’ video call experience will be available for up to four children from £85 per family.
Booking will open from early November, but families can pre-register now for priority booking on the Santa’s Lapland website.
In 2021, once again families will be able to visit Santa in Lapland.
Trips are available to reserve now with departures on 26 November to 24 December 2021, and deposits of £150pp.
