Staying in Santa’s Saariselkä Inn with Santa’s Lapland

We have just got home from a magical break with Santa’s Lapland and we had the most amazing time.
Going on a Santa break is not cheap, especially when you take into consideration that you are only actually on resort for around 48 hours and I priced up lots of options before I made our booking last year.
In the end I opted for the cheapest option which was staying in the Saariselkä Inn. but I have to admit this was the only part of the holiday that was slightly disappointing.

The hotel itself is built in a traditional Lapland style and is located slap bang in the middle of Saariselkä, a short walk to all the facilities in the town and opposite the modern Holiday Club leisure centre complex.

We had a family room which consisted of a bedroom, a lounge area and a wet room and sauna. In the bedroom were two single beds pushed together to make a double and a single put-up bed and the lounge area was taken up with a sofa bed.

The rooms were very dated, the bathroom was in need of refurbishment, but they were clean and lovely and warm, which is very important when it is -17°C outside. TIP: Take your own toilet paper – the one they provided was like tracing paper.

In the bathroom there was also a sauna which was handy if you wanted to warm up, but sadly the only ones that go to use it were our elves, Cinnamon and Clove, who surprised us with a visit.

The room also contained plenty of wardrobe space to hang and dry all our snowsuits and boots.

The room also came with a large widescreen TV in the lounge area, a small fridge, kettle and a hairdryer. Sadly tea / coffee and milk were not provided, however there is a supermarket a short walk away so you can stock up.

Breakfast was provided from 7am-10am in the Saariselka Inn, which is the local pub and a short, minute long, walk from our room.

The rear of the pub is cordoned off in the mornings for guest breakfasts, where you get the choice of cereal, toast or a continental breakfast.

For the rest of the day, the pub is opened up to everyone and you get to enjoy a hot chocolate in front of the fire with the friendly locals.

The pub is also where your Santa’s Lapland rep is based, allowing you to book extra activities or set up surprises for the kids.

Dinner was set at the neighbouring hotel, the Tunturi, which was a short 3 minute walk in the opposite direction.

Having to walk to breakfast and dinner was one of the kids favourite parts as they were close enough that they didn’t have to don their snowsuits, plus they got to take their favourite mode of transport – the sledge!

The food itself was buffet style, with some traditional food on offer as well as child friendly options such as beef burgers, chicken nuggets and fries.

Everywhere was decorated with twinkly lights and Christmas trees which made it all feel warm and festive, even though we only had around 4 hours of daylight.

Looking back at our stay, our room was basic, but perfectly adequate for our needs as we spent very little time in it, instead heading outside to play in the snow at every given opportunity, however, I would have liked to see tea and coffee provided in the room as the website suggested.

Keep an eye on the blog for all the exciting things we got up to during our stay, including searching for Santa, the northern lights safari, reindeer rides and husky sledding!

• family travel
• father christmas
• finland
• lapland
• saariselka
• santas lapand
• search for santa