Wild About Lapland — Attraction in Rovaniemi sub-region

A MUST-READ Before Booking with Wild About Lapland

We (4 friends) had a 5-day holiday in Rovaniemi and booked 4 activities with Wild About Lapland, drawn in by their high ratings. Some experiences were 5-star incredible, while others felt like a waste of time and money, making it impossible to give one fair rating. Here’s a breakdown:

1️⃣ Northern Lights Wilderness Tour with Professional Camera – ⭐ 1 STAR A complete disappointment. The night was -18°C, light activity was poor, and despite this, we were taken on a 4-hour freezing drive in a van so cold we couldn’t even see outside. The "photography tips" felt like filler, and with no real chance of seeing the lights, the tour should have been canceled like other operators did. We saw the Northern Lights on our own 3 days later at 3 AM, just 15 minutes from the city—warm and comfortable in an Uber. Tip: Do NOT book an Aurora tour in advance; check conditions and book last minute.

2️⃣ Snowmobile Adventure in Lapland – ⭐ 5 STARS Absolutely thrilling! Our guide Toni was fantastic, and the route was stunning. That said, we did it in -30°C, and no gear can fully protect you at 45 km/h in that temperature. Tip: Book this on a warmer day (-10°C range) if possible. Bring hand/feet warmers and snow goggles, or your eyelashes might freeze shut!

3️⃣ Ethical Husky Kennel with 10 km Husky Safari – ⭐ 5 STARS One of the best experiences of our lives.A beautiful, unforgettable tour where we not only had an amazing 10 km sled ride but also learned so much from passionate trainers and got to interact with the huskies. Highly recommended!

4️⃣ Arctic Adventure through Magical Frozen Forests – NO STARS After multiple poorly planned experiences, we worried about the gear and extreme cold for this 4 km (8hr) hike and asked our options, to change a different activity etc. or if we could cancel two days in advance. We weren’t informed about a 50% refund option and ended up losing €570 for three people who skipped it for health reasons.

Final Thoughts – ⭐ 3 STARS Overall While some activities were amazing, the company seems more focused on profit than guest experience. Lapland is extreme, and better planning, transparency, and preparation are needed.

Some advice for them:

Clearly communicate weather risks.-30°C is not the same as -10°C. Guides should carry some emergency hand/feet warmers. Better itinerary details—break down exact outdoor vs. transport time so people know what they’re signing up for. Aurora tours need a rethink. People don’t want a photography class in -20°C or to waste time eating sausages when it’s obvious the lights won’t appear. Be honest, shorten tours, or cancel. Warmer vans are a must. Heat them properly before tours so people can at least see outside.

Bottom Line For snowmobile and husky safaris, this company is great. But for Northern Lights or trekking, you’re better off booking last-minute private tours on arrival. Premium pricing should come with premium experience—Wild About Lapland still has a...

I cannot stress enough how reckless and irresponsible this company is when it comes to safety. On the surface, everything seems fine, but when things go wrong—it's a nightmare.

One of our fellow travellers was told to slide down an unofficial path by the guide by the frozen waterfalls, leading to them breaking their leg. Then our guide, who had to run back up the canyon to get cell service, was told by their manager to leave the injured person in the frozen canyon and take the remaining guests back to the office - saying that the living and uninjured guests are the highest priority, while telling the guide that he's not qualified to give extended first aid anyway. It caused him a lot of visible distress, and made us question if he could safely drive us back to the city which was at least 2-3 hours of driving on very icy roads, in the dark.

No surprise these injuries happen, as they take young completely unexperienced people to run their tours - often these people come from countries that don't even have snow, and for many of them, it seems like it was their first job ever. The guide I had said that its her very first time driving an 8-seater, having gotten her driving licence in Southern Italy earlier that year (where it never really goes below 12 degrees Celsius). She too was visibly not at ease when driving on the dangerous roads.

I spoke to the locals later on and they told me the turnover rate is really high at the company, with over 90% of people that work for them a season never coming back again.

Generally the aurora tours in Lapland are overpriced for what they are, but in this company, its even worse, because their no-refund policy and adamancy to go out even when its super cloudy means that you end up just wasting time and money when you know there's nothing there. Often, you can just tell by the guides attitudes.

Since we had a package deal, we got to experience more of their tour offerings that are equal shams - snowshoeing is walking on a frozen lake for 20 minutes (where there was no need for snowshoes in the first place, our guide ended up just walking on it with their normal shoes) and then eating mediocre sausages for the remaining 2-3 hours in a tent.

The husky and reindeer farm, we were just dropped off to another company - we could've saved a bit by just going directly the reindeer farms and the husky kennels.

My advice? If you're not comfortable doing things yourself and you really want guided tours, look for companies that are staffed by locals, not by foreign-run operators looking to mooch off of the local tourism economy. The only good guide at Wild About Lapland that my kids liked was Gabur, and we just took his direct contact for future tours - much...

The tour guide repeatedly stated their “English was not so good” and was foreign to the area (not Finnish) resulting in zero stimulating conversation regarding the northern lights.

the attempt of a chase of the Northern Lights utilizing the Aurora app was a recorded singular stop of :26 second ending in a direct drive to the pre-booked yurts already occupied by tours that left simultaneously to us. Due to the limited seating (two tour groups/18 people plus two tour guides) we stood outside, waiting for the other tour to leave.

Aware that it was highly unlikely to see the Northern Lights due from the clouds, we decided to go on the tour anyways as we have previously read the reviews stating guides were engaging enough in information to compensate for the weather.

The tour guide was noticeably under qualified to be guiding this tour. I asked if there would be an opportunity to find a restroom utilizing three different languages, to which the tour guide once again replied “My English is not so good.”

My spouse chose the English tour out of convenience since that is the language we both share. If we would have known Wild About Lapland company was over booked with English tours, leaving us with an under qualified tour guide, we would have chosen the Spanish/Finnish tour and translated between each other.

This morning we received the photos from the tour. All the photos. We received photos from other families on the tour, including the individual photos of a child. That is beyond inappropriate and lazy to mass send the groups photos to the 8 strangers in the van. I’m beyond disappointed and if I were that family I would feel violated that a photo of my child was emailed directly to a stranger via Wild About Lapland company’s email. The consent was for using our photos for marketing/website but not for private use to personal emails.

The tour guide was not qualified to guide a tour. Nothing stimulating. Very lazy, messy and mismanaged. There is an option to give feed back on their website, in which my spouse and I attempted multiple times from multiple emails to reach them. Before the tour they had a quick response time through the messages and email, but after the tour with our feedback, they have yet to contact us back, furthering the theory that this is just a money grab.

I suggest using a different company with more transparency or bypassing a tour group altogether using Uber and...