Lapland hotels, cabins and glass-roofed stays

Four kinds of stay, ten bases

This site covers ten bases in Lapland, each with dozens of places to stay. Here we compare the four kinds of stay you will end up choosing between, hotel, self-catering cabin, glass-roofed room and snow hotel, with one checked example of each. Named places in a particular town are on that base’s own page, linked below, with what we have checked so far. The kind of stay usually decides more about your trip than the exact building. A family weighing a hotel against a self-catering cabin is choosing between a cooked breakfast and flexibility more than between two rooms.

The bases, at a glance

Pick the base first if you already know what the trip is for; pick the kind of stay first if you do not.

Each base’s own page has more detail and, as we check them, named places to stay: Rovaniemi, Levi, Ylläs, Pyhä-Luosto, Saariselkä, Inari, Kilpisjärvi, Ruka, Salla and Kemi.

The kinds of stay, compared

Hotel. A conventional room, usually in or near a town centre, with breakfast and a restaurant on site. Arctic City Hotel is one checked example; every base with a town centre has equivalents, and Rovaniemi’s own where to stay page names more. Not for anyone wanting to wake up under a glass roof.

Self-catering cabin. A wooden cabin, usually with a sauna and a kitchen, rented by the night or the week, from a resort’s own booking system or a private owner. Finnish cabins are priced in three different ways, so a single price band would mislead. Hotel groups that also own cabins quote a nightly rate: Wilderness Hotel Muotka’s 42 m² Panorama Log Cabin for four starts at 249 EUR a night. Fell-resort cottages at Ylläs are sold by the week, from about 850 EUR for a cottage sleeping four to six. Metsähallitus rents wilderness huts inside the national parks for 70 to 100 EUR a night, with no electricity and no running water, which is a different kind of night entirely. Several operators we opened, Kakslauttanen and Levi Alpine Chalets among them, publish no figure at all and send you to a booking calendar. Our cabins and lodges page has the full table, including the operators that publish nothing.

Glass-roofed room. A room with a glazed roof or wall over the bed, sold under the marketing name “glass igloo” whether or not it is dome-shaped. Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort in Saariselkä publishes winter half-board packages from 501 EUR a night, and our glass igloos guide keeps the comparison current; other operators, including some in Rovaniemi’s own Arctic Circle area, do not publish a rate at all. Not for a tight budget, and not for a trip where the aurora itself matters more than the room: a glass roof only shows you the sky when it is clear and dark, whichever bed you are in.

Snow or ice hotel. A hotel rebuilt from snow and ice each winter, with a fixed season and rooms kept at sub-zero temperatures. Our ice hotels guide covers named operators in Finland, what a night there is like, and current price bands with their dates. Not for most trips: a single night is the usual booking, and most guests spend the rest of their stay in a normal room.

What we left out, and why

Not every hotel or cabin operator for every base is named here. That is larger work, done one destination at a time, and each base’s own page links to what we have checked so far. Snow and ice hotel prices are kept off the table because our ice hotels guide keeps them current, and two copies would drift apart. If you already know your base, its own where-to-stay page, once published, will have more detail than this one.