Arctic Light Hotel — Hotel in Rovaniemi sub-region

TLDR: Top 3 hotel stays, ever. INCREDIBLE staff, comfy room, and delicious dining, plus a sauna.

For Christmas 2023, we opted to forgo gifts and travel to Roveniemi and experience Lapland. We stumbled upon the Arctic Light Hotel in our desperate search for accommodations during an extremely busy time. We are SOOO glad we did.

Where do I start? This was hands down, a top 3 hotel experience for us!

From the beginning, when we arrived tired and frustrated from our travels, they made us feel welcome, helped with our luggage, and improved our mood.

They took our bags to our room and left little gifts for our kids. A nice touch to start. The room (loft) was well designed, clean, and spacious for our family of five. They even had the foldout couch and cot ready for the kids.

The staff: Nothing short of amazing. Held their own and surpassed what we've received at RC, FS, and several boutique resorts. Mark from Russia, and our Greek server (sorry, I just can't remember your name) were amazing and made our stay unforgettable. Mark and co. made sure we had what we needed, arranged pickups and sorted dinner reservations. They are highly accessible by email prior to the trip as well as accomodating when we needed to make a dining change so we could spend more time in SantaLand on Christmas Day.

Over & Above: We thought (sorry Mark!) we lost a stuffed reindeer at breakfast. We scoured the dining area and eventually let the desk know. At dinner, Mark followed up and went to look for it again. Never would I have expected that. Ultimately, it was brought back to the room and got tucked out of sight till we discovered it... 🤷🏽‍♂️

The food: We had the breakfast buffet both days which has more than enough options and all of them delicious plus the made to order and custom drinks machines... Amazing.

We had Christmas dinner at the hotel and sampled the delicacy that is reindeer sirloin. It lives up to every but if the hype. The entire meal was amazing from a culinary perspective and they were really sweet to give our kids seconds of their favorite dishes.

What made the meal even more special was the conversation with our server from Greece. (Forgive that I forgot the name, not the person) We learned a bit more about the country, got travel tips, and got to know a bit about her. Always nice to truly engage with those making your stay more memorable.

What else? They have great concierge accumen and even anticipate needs. They were seemingly unfazed by challenges and consummate professionals at every interaction.

Needless to stay, we got spoiled by them and they have set such a high bar that we will be comparing them for years as we continue to see the world.

If this review doesn't make your decision, I don't know what it will take. In the famous words of Nike,...

We stayed over the Christmas period just gone. Whilst we found the hotel accommodation to be very comfortable and the staff professional and helpful, we were NOT happy with the Christmas dinner we received or were charged for. We understand that is the peak Christmas period and that we will be charged over inflated prices but we were shocked with what we received. We paid 165 euro for a 5 course meal per adult. The servings were tiny and we were hungry afterwards, a rack of reindeer was 2 tiny little cutlets (we are not big eaters). What upset me the most was the 106 euro charge for our 12 year old son which was a plain burger and a small side of chips! A small bun, a small burger with sauce. No cheese, no bacon, no extras at all. We thought that was an outrageous charge. There was no generosity with the food and the prices were ridiculous. I complained but and was offered a bottle of wine which we didn't want. At check out l said l would pay a reduced rate for the burger but not the full price. The lady checking us out reluctantly said she would take the cost of the burger off. We have arrived home and checked our account to see we were charged the full price. Very disappointing experience.

6/2/24 Thank you for your response Maria. We were charged $760 Australian dollars by your hotel which equates to 439 euro. We prepaid the hotel so this was only charge we made to the hotel to settle prior to check out. I have a screenshot of the charge to my credit card to prove the transaction. If you can please provide me your email address l can email you a copy of this transaction from our bank. If we had received a decent meal l probably would not have done this review but to be hungry and pay that amount of money was not acceptable. The description of the burger provided was to highlight how small and plain the food was for the charge. We were never told that our son could order an alternative meal from the menu, it was just provided like it was a set meal. 19/4/24 Still waiting for you to respond to my last update Maria. 21/4/24 Still no response from this hotel regarding this matter. Maria can you please provide me your email so that we can resolve this charge that was meant to be removed. I am disappointed that there has been a lack of follow-up regarding...

I thought I already posted this review but it appears it didn’t save. I feel so strongly about the service (and food) we experienced the 3 nights we stayed that I’m rewriting it.||My kids (14 yrs and 15 yrs) and I stayed in two rooms here for 3 nights. We knew we’d have to switch the last night as the hotel was booked for the nights we reserved…no bother. The front desk made it easy for us to do so. The rooms are large enough for European hotel rooms and nicely decorated. I don’t know what some guests are complaining about especially as you get into high season, prices go up….||For the price, the breakfast buffet was amazing and plentiful with local, traditional foods to try and do much more. My kids- who need food as teenagers were always talking about breakfast and planning the night before. We normally were satisfied that we could skip lunch.||Speaking of food, the restaurant in the hotel is rated number 1 and for good reason. It is phenomenal. Compliments to the chef(s) and our wonderful server, Johnny. This is where we first had reindeer- all of us—and it was delectable. Never could be topped. What a special experience- reserve ahead. ||Location couldn’t be beat. We walked to town. Took a short taxi to the ski slopes, walked to the town tourism office (who were extremely helpful in finding us a snowmobile northern lights tour…yes, we saw them!) and you could easily get to Santa’s Village (we were going to stay a night there so didn’t need to worry about that). For the price, food, and coziness of the hotel it’s a great base.||The most important reason I recommend this place is how the front desk went over and beyond to help me in need. I need to point out Marjut and Tony.|I had ensured I had an international calling plan upon departure from the States however it was not working, I couldn’t get a viable network so I could not call or text any Finnish numbers. This was a major problem as we just arrived. Tony worked with me for hours to try to figure it out as well and eventually got me an online Finnish SIM network card to last during my stay. I’m making this sound like an easy situation but trust me, it was not. The time, patience and help he provided to me and my kids would not have been found at larger hotels.||I am...