Name: Lapland Northern Lights Hotel Ilveslinna
Address: Keskustie 10, Ranua, Ranua, Ranua, 97700, Finland
Rating: 6

Smoke-free property

Heating

Newspapers

Ticket assistance

Gift shop

Express check-in/check-out

Garden

Terrace

All Spaces Non-Smoking (public and private)

Reception desk

General

Non-smoking rooms

Soundproof rooms

Wardrobe/Closet

Mosquito net

Rooms

Breakfast

Packed Lunches

Meals

Free Wi-Fi

Internet

Airport transportation

Transfer

Russian

English

Languages Spoken

Tour assistance

Tourist services

Barbecue grill(s)

Billiards

Karaoke

Hiking

Picnic area

Fishing

Barbeque

Ping-Pong

Recreation

Free parking

Parking

Private beach

Next to the beach

Pool and beach

Event facilities

Business

Darts

Sports

Sauna

Beauty and wellness

Ski storage

Skiing

Winter sports

Pets allowed

Pets

Location

At the hotel

Lapland Northern Lights Hotel Ilveslinna

Ranua

child-bed

child-bed-fee

external-private-bathroom

private-bathroom

shared-bathroom

10-beds

11-beds

12-beds

13-beds

14-beds

15-beds

16-beds

17-beds

18-beds

19-beds

2-beds

20-beds

21-beds

22-beds

23-beds

24-beds

25-beds

26-beds

27-beds

28-beds

29-beds

3-beds

30-beds

31-beds

32-beds

33-beds

34-beds

35-beds

36-beds

37-beds

38-beds

39-beds

4-beds

40-beds

5-beds

6-beds

7-beds

8-beds

9-beds

king-bed

queen-bed

limited-time

lounge

treatment

no-window

bay-view

bosphorus-view

canal-view

city-view

courtyard-view

garden-view

golf-view

harbour-view

inland-view

lake-view

land-view

mountain-view

ocean-front

ocean-view

oceanside

panoramic-view

park-view

partial-ocean-view

partial-sea-view

partial-view

pool-view

river-view

sea-front

sea-view

street-view

sunrise-view

sunset-view

water-view

with-view

annex

basement

main-building

1-bedroom

2-bedrooms

3-bedrooms

4-bedrooms

5-bedrooms

6-bedrooms

not-guaranteed

wired-internet-access

smoking

sauna

duplex

safe

mini-bar

breakfast-for-1

breakfast-for-2

pets-allowed

wi-fi

kitchen

Hotel was built in the 80's but has been refurbished to some extend. Rooms are tidy and clean. Hotel staff is friendly and helpful. We had tasty reindeer stew for lunch. Breakfast is included into room price. Free use of sauna located at the ground floor, no pool.

If you are looking for mid priced hotel with good service this is a good choice. Do not expect five star facilities, though!

Note: package including tickets to Ranua Zoo is good value for money.

Friendly service and home made style food

I stayed with my husband and 2 sons (aged 9 and 11) at the glass igloo for three nights. We found it very well designed, comfortable and very well warming. We loved to wake up in the view of snowy trees; listening to music by the side of the fireplace. The kids loved to play with the sled in the snow and giggling in the sauna. All the staff was so smiling and hospitable. I strongly recommend the glass igloo to those who plan to have a vacation in Lapland. It has also got the advantage of being just 3 km away from the Wild Life Safari Center.

A glass igloo in the view of a snowy forest

Our visit experience was a bit strange. Sunday morning at breakfast boiled and scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, rice pies and porridge was served along with bread, cheese, ham, tomato, cucumber and salad and so on was served. Monday morning we were only customers and breakfast included toast but no toaster, other bred was not fresh so it would have needed toasting as well. Coffee maker was ready to put on but coffee wasn’t done. Ham, cheese, tomato and cucumber was wrapped in plastic in a fridge, no warm dishes was served. Quality difference between breakfasts was astonishing. 

Room was all right in it’s price range.


Confusing breakfast 

We decided to stay here because they had deals with the zoo. We couldn't book online so my partner ( who is Finnish ) called to try and arrange things for us. She called twice 4 months in advance, and got off the phone saying that she wasn't confident that it would be booked. 
Anyway we arrived on the day we had booked and sure enough they had no record of us coming. It wasn't a problem though as they had lots of rooms. The rooms were nice and clean and the 4 of us fitted in ok. 
We were told by the person on reception that the dinner service finished at 5pm so we arrived at 4:30 to be told that lunch had finished and that dinner didn't start until 6pm. So we went for a walk across the road the supermarket and got some snacks. The same person in reception told us that breakfast started at 8:30am. I went down stairs at 7:15 to plug the car in because it snowed over night and saw that people were eating. 
Over all it is a very nice, clean and tidy hotel. I just think the reception and restaurant need to communicate a bit better. 

Comfortable

The hotel is not that cheap, but the service they offer is really ''cheap cheap cheap'' stile.
Rooms and infrastructure are way below standard for a 3*  hotel, the service is a real deception. It would seem that staff think ''you got a room, didn't you? be happy with it and don't expect much else''. They don't even clean the rooms and fix the beds between the 1st and the 2nd night! Staff hardly understand and speak EN.
Do you remember the legendary efficency of Northern Europe countries? A legend,  indeed!

Really "low cost" service

Marketed as overlooking a lake it sort of does but there is a drive way and trees first and only on one side and not visible from the igloo.  The other is a hotel and road. Street lights shine into the room right at eye level when in bed. You can see completely inside from the road. Also if you do go take your own pillow. On the plus side it had its own sauna.

Don’t stay here.

My husband and I traveled to Finland from Australia for the Christmas and New Years, and as it was our first wedding anniversary, wanted to treat us for an expectedly luxurious igloo hotel.

We paid quite a bit for the night (around AU$630), and expected it to be worth it. 
The igloo itself was quite nice and had well-thought out details. Sauna and bathroom were both really nice and modern. We had a fireplace in the igloo, which we put fire in, very cosy! 

The bed was made with 3 very low quality pillows and there weren't any extra ones. As it was Sunday when we checked in, there was no staff to call in for assistance. In fact there was absolutely no one around when we arrived on Sunday afternoon just after 5pm. We were given the instructions to get inside, which worked, after being curious enough to go through some random buildings and trying different doors.

There was a note on the room's table noting that the hotel restaurant would be closed on Sunday, and the breakfast would be served in the hotel's meeting room. Our breakfast would be on Monday, so we didn't suspect this meaning that ours would be in the meeting room. We were wrong: on Monday morning the hotel receptionist informed us the breakfast would indeed, be served in the meeting room. Disappointed is the word that described the breakfast: it was DIY-type of set-up: everything was placed in a fridge (cheese, ham, tomato and cucumber slices, yogurt in a bowl, orange juice and milk), coffee machine had to be filled by us, with instructions only in Finnish, on a hand-written scribbled post-it note. For a place that is mostly booked by tourists, I find this very disturbing, as there were no signs in any foreign language, and to operate the coffee machine, you would definitely need to know the language. For $650/night price tag, I was expecting a proper breakfast, which this was not.

We noticed the igloo's glass ceiling's two windows were cracked. My husband woke me up around 4:30am for the leaking window right about above our heads. (as a side note: after browsing on Tripadvisor's review page, there had been comments about the cracked windows as far back as April 2018, and it still hadn't been fixed.)

In the igloo, there was a capsule coffee machine, and exactly two capsules for us to enjoy. Well, to our surprise, the second one was just milk (supposedly a cappuccino).

Another disappointment was the minibar fridge that didn't work even after plugging it in, and there weren't any switches to turn on. Luckily it was a cold night and snow around, so we could cool off our champagne in the snow outside.

I wrote a letter to the hotel the day after our check-out, about the issues we faced during our stay, but after a week since we checked out, we haven't heard a single word from them. Definitely not worth the hefty price tag! Do not recommend, and would not stay again.

Jaana & Johan K

Definitely not worth the $$$$

Hotelli ei vastaa nettisivujen kuvausta. Huoneessa ei ollut ilmastointia ja kylpyhuone oli remontoimaton. Huoneessa oli tunkkainen haju ja puutteellinen ilmanvaihto. Jäänyt ajastaan jälkeen. Harkitsimme aiemmin myös iglua, jota emme onneksi varanneet (sijaitsi hotellin parkkipaikalla ilman minkäänlaista omaa rauhaa). Huoneen äänieristys oli puutteellinen (baarin melu kantautui huoneeseen). Kannattaa ajaa Rovaniemelle hotelliin.

Hotel wasn’t as described. There wasn’t any air conditioning in the room and the bathroom was in poor condition. The room smelled stuffy and didn`t have proper ventilation. Hotel seemed outdated. Don’t make the mistake of reserving the igloo (it’s situated in a parking lot with very limited privacy). The soundproofing of the room was insufficient.

Ylihintainen, ei vastaa kuvausta/Overpriced, wasn’t as described

The hotel is one of the few feasible options to stay close to the Ranua Zoo. Unfortunately this also means that the competition is not pushing the hotel to renew itself, while the limited demand keeps the pressure high on the prices. The hotel would desperately need a facelift to bring the rooms and common areas to a modern era.

The hotel provides all the basic services a traveler needs, but is far behind any major chain hotels on the quality of the offering. While Ranua obviously is not a very busy tourist attraction, it would be difficult to attract more international travelers without a decent hotel offering. I consider the hotel still a decent choice for a one night stay, but could not recommend a longer stay to anyone.

Time for a facelift

This place has similar rates than a superior room in an established Nordic hotel chain. You'd think that the price would be reflected in quality, but no. The rooms do not have air conditioning, so it is scorching hot. Ventilation through the window is not possible as there are no mosquito nets installed - a crucial thing in Lapland. The minibar fridges have been taken out of use, but left in the rooms anyway for some weird reason.

Service? Can be best described by the receptionist/waiter bringing in a dish, walking directly past the utensils and then pointing back to them and telling the customer to fetch them yourself. Two hours later, you have the opportunity to sit down next to your food remains as nobody bothered to collect them away. Several tables were loaded with leftovers from hours back. Yuck.

This place is at best a low-end motel, but priced as it would be a fancier hotel.

Lapland Northern Lights Hotel Ilveslinna

Main amenities of the hotel

Available rooms