Ho, Ho, Here’s to the Reopening of the Most Cheerful Holiday Destination in the World
The holiday travel season is around the corner and no destination in the world offers more holiday cheer than our customer, SantaPark. The Virtual Oracle Road Trip is making a stop in Rovaniemi, Finland, today to check in on Santa and his elves and how the Christmas preparations are coming along in this winter wonderland. We hope you will join us on the adventure at: https://www.oracle.com/news/virtual-road-trip/
Or revisit SantaPark’s story from a Christmas past below or at Forbes.
SantaPark Turns Christmas Spirit into Year-Round Profit
Just beneath the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi, Finland, Santa Claus and his elves are feeling particularly joyful. Not because it’s almost Christmas at their cavern in SantaPark, but because this once-troubled amusement park now welcomes thousands of visitors daily as a far more impressive theme park and is producing double-digit annual revenue growth.
Katja Ikäheimo-Länkinen and her husband, Ilkka Länkinen, acquired the park from the Finnish government and city of Rovaniemi in 2009, when it was operating at a $500,000 loss. “There was no local Christmas spirit, no magic,” says Ikäheimo-Länkinen, who notes that the park’s main attractions were carousel rides and souvenir shops.
With a little money and lots of ideas, “we wanted to create a perfect fairytale Christmas dreamland that both tourists and travel agents would fall in love with,” she says.
The couple spent five years overseeing the reconstruction of SantaPark, taking down the rides and trinket shops and creating a theme park where families and friends participate in Christmas activities. Among them: Sending greeting cards from the Elf post office; decorating cookies in Mrs. Gingerbread bakery; and learning essential skills in the Elf School. Guests can also spot Santa in his office as he pores over lists of who’s naughty and nice, reviews maps, and tests navigational equipment to plot the next gift-delivery route.
Sacks Full of Insights
To better understand how different guests experience each type of activity, the SantaPark team uses Oracle Hospitality MICROS Simphony Cloud. The point-of-sale platform’s real-time reporting capabilities let managers see, hour by hour, what’s going on in various parts of the business.
“If, for example, we’re hosting a group in Santa Claus Secret Forest who are visiting from Spain, we can see what types of drinks they’re ordering, which foods they’re eating, and then use that insight to plan an evening in one of our other attractions, designed specifically to their tastes,” Ikäheimo-Länkinen says. “We can also use that insight to design similar experiences for new guests visiting us from Spain in the future.”
The Oracle platform also is helping the company manage its rapid growth—revenue was up 67% in its 2017-18 fiscal year and is on track to rise at least 33% in 2019, Ikäheimo-Länkinen says. Previously, spreadsheets and outdated software required staffers to do a lot of manual data entry and cross-checking to track ticket sales, gift shop receipts, and warehouse inventory.
“We knew that environment couldn’t scale,” she says. “We needed a system that helps us grow each part of our business and a comprehensive reporting tool to analyze overall guest behavior, as well as sales, customer service, and inventory.”
Upscale Accommodations
The company’s newest attraction is the Arctic Treehouse Hotel. Opened in 2016 and serving guests year-round, the property features luxury suites offering panoramic views of the northern lights (which can be seen from September to the beginning of April) and the midnight sun (which can be seen from June to July). The hotel’s upscale restaurant serves local Lappish entrees such as sautéed reindeer and smoked salmon, as well as side dishes such as wild berries, bread cheese, and roasted root vegetables—most of which are sourced locally.
A team led by Tina Kaikkonen, general manager of hotel operations, uses Oracle Hospitality OPERA Cloud to communicate with housekeeping staff, track maintenance activities, and check in guests from mobile devices.
Because OPERA Cloud integrates with Simphony, “we’re not only running sales-performance reports for the hotel, but we’re also able to see how much revenue we’re generating from our guests at the restaurant, gift shop, and spa,” she says. In its second year of operation, the hotel increased its capacity by 30%, while maintaining the same high occupancy rate, Kaikkonen says.
Although consumers pay twice as much to visit the park in winter than in the summer, “Christmas is a state of mind that can be celebrated throughout the year,” Ikäheimo-Länkinen says. “Rovaniemi has many other things to offer—you can visit the reindeer farms, learn about herding, and experience nature during the endless days of the midnight sun.”
Perhaps the most important element of SantaPark’s success is the passion the two owners bring to the business. Mr. Länkinen had been one of the first to graduate from the original Academy of Santa’s Helpers, in 1998. By the early 2000s, Mrs. Ikäheimo- Länkinen became his business partner, and together they developed a “Christmas experience” concept, bought land in Rovaniemi, and in 2007 opened a Christmas attraction in the forest that became the inspiration for what is now Santa Claus Secret Forest.
From there they acquired SantaPark. “People come to the park for a one-of-a-kind, authentic experience,” Ikäheimo-Länkinen says. “We’re doing this with our hearts, and I think people can feel it.”
