Hotels install cameras to alert tourists to northern lights

Hotels and resorts across Finnish Lapland are installing camera-based systems that detect the northern lights and send alerts to tourists’ phones, Yle reports. Rovaniemi-based software developer Jari Ketola has installed dozens of the cameras.

The technology aims to reduce disappointment because the northern lights are difficult to predict. The camera monitors the sky, identifies the phenomenon automatically and sends an alert to a traveller’s smartphone.

“Visitors can look at the image to see whether the northern lights are strong enough. But a foreign visitor will probably always run outside, whatever they look like,” Ketola said.

Dozens of cameras installed across Lapland

Dozens of hotels and resorts in Lapland now offer camera-based northern lights alert systems to their guests. Customers have exclusive access to alerts and images from the camera installed at their accommodation.

Thirty of the cameras belong to Ketola, who plans to install 14 more during the coming winter season. Other providers also offer camera-based alert systems in Lapland.

Ketola’s cameras use machine learning, meaning the system becomes more accurate as it collects more images.

Yle visited him while he was installing a camera in Olleronvaara in Rovaniemi, where rows of square, glass-walled cabins are being built. Accommodation with glass walls or glass roofs has become an important part of northern lights tourism.

“The strongest growth in northern lights tourism took place in the 2000s, when accommodation in glass igloos and similar buildings became hugely popular,” said Sanna Kärkkäinen, chief executive of Visit Rovaniemi.

She said social media had significantly influenced the sector. Images of northern lights seen from igloo accommodation, shared by influencers, media outlets and public figures, had provided highly effective marketing.

Demand continues to grow

Ketola said the growth of northern lights tourism was reflected in the number of new customers and users. More than 67,000 new devices were registered with his system during the last season.

“When guests book trips, they already ask the hotel whether it has a northern lights alert system,” he said.

Kärkkäinen does not expect northern lights tourism to decline. She said interest in Arctic regions was growing and that the phenomenon extended Rovaniemi’s tourism season, particularly in September and October and in March and April.

According to data from Ketola’s cameras, however, the chances of seeing the northern lights in Lapland are weakest in early spring. Ketola said he often advised people to visit in September or October, when it was not yet too cold to spend time outdoors.