Successful ski-resort expands
Some 600,000 people visits Levi ski-resort annually and the construction boom continues. The 325 meter small hill in the middle of no-where in northern Finland is becoming the most popular winter resort in the Barents Region.
Charter planes are coming from all over Europe, including Moscow, Düsseldorf, Paris and London. There are 22,000 beds today and new hotels and apartment houses are constructed all round the hill, called Levitunturi in Finnish.
On the parking lots outside the Alpine style apartment houses, cars from Murmansk, St. Petersburg, Norway and Finland are lining up. It is not only the downhill skiing that attracts people from all over the Barents Region to Levi; the resort is also one of the most popular party-places in northern Finland.
As BarentsObserver wrote last year, some €450 million is invested in new hotels, restaurants and apartments over the last three years. This year, a €20 million new spa-complex is under construction. 17 new pools will be opened soon, according to the newspaper Aftenposten.
Up in the hill near the centre of the resort, the Levin Tori hotel and congress centre was recently opened with a floor space of 25,000 square meters. Last year, a €100 million hotel was opened in the centre.
Aftenposten writes that building plans for another 150,000 square meters are on the paper. That will double the amount of floor space in Levi.
