Arctic SnowHotel and Glass Igloos, Rovaniemi: Prices, Seasons and Is It Worth It

Updated 10 September 2026.

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Arctic SnowHotel and Glass Igloos is two hotels sharing one lakeshore. One is carved from snow and ice every December and melts every April. The other is a row of heated glass igloos with a 360-degree roof, a private bathroom and an aurora alarm that wakes you when the sky starts moving. They sit together on Lake Lehtojärvi in Sinettä, about half an hour north-west of Rovaniemi, and they are the reason people book here rather than somewhere closer to town.

The published floor is about 299 EUR a night with breakfast and free SnowHotel entry, but on a midweek night in mid-March 2027 the 33 m² family igloo books at 839€ for two and the 20 m² standard igloo had already sold out; in September the standard igloo is about 200€. The snow rooms undercut both, at 449 to 644€, with a shared bathroom. My verdict: it is the only place in Finland where you can sleep one night on ice and the next under glass without moving hotels, and the combination package with transfers and dinner is the sensible way to buy it. If you only want glass, and you want it cheap, come in September instead of December.

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What it is and where it sits

The address is Lehtoahontie 27 in Sinettä, a village of nothing much about 27 to 30 km north-west of Rovaniemi centre. In practice it is a 30-minute drive.

The snow hotel is a full-size build, not a novelty igloo in a car park: rooms and suites carved out of snow with ice sculptures on the walls and ice furniture inside, plus an ice restaurant and bar. It is rebuilt each winter and opens on 15 December, every year, running to 31 March. The glass igloo village next to it runs far longer, from 1 September, because glass does not melt.

The lake matters more than the buildings. An open horizon in every direction, no streetlights, no neighbouring resort throwing light across the ice. When the sky is clear out here it is genuinely black, which is the whole argument for driving 30 minutes instead of staying in Rovaniemi centre.

The rooms compared

Three ways to book, and they are not interchangeable. The glass igloo is a hotel room. The snow room is an experience you do once. The combination is both, in order, with the logistics handled.

Those figures come from live Booking.com rates for this property, sampled for three nights: one in September, a midweek night in mid-December and a midweek night in mid-March 2027. Hotel pricing moves daily with demand and availability, so treat them as the shape of the thing rather than a quote, and check your own dates before you commit.

Every room Booking.com offered for a midweek night in mid-March 2027, alongside the same rooms on the other two dates I sampled. Two adults, breakfast included, taxes and fees in.

Adding dinner to any of them costs roughly 125 to 155€ per person on top.

Three things fall out of those numbers, and the first one is the opposite of what I expected. Sleeping in the ice is not automatically the expensive choice: on the same March night a snow double is 449€ while the only glass igloo still available is 839€. What actually drives the price here is the season and the size of the room, not whether the walls are made of snow.

Second, the season gap is enormous. The same 33 m² family igloo is 391€ in September and 839€ in mid-March — the identical room, more than double. And the snow suite is cheaper in mid-March at 599€ than in mid-December at 699€, for ice that is exactly as cold in both months.

Third, and this is the one that will cost you money: the cheap igloo goes first. Six months ahead, the 20 m² standard igloo was already gone for mid-March and only the 33 m² family igloo was left. Two people who leave it late do not pay 839€ because they wanted a bigger room; they pay it because the small one sold out. If the standard igloo is what you want, book it further ahead than feels reasonable.

The snow-room night, honestly

Snow rooms sit at a few degrees below zero regardless of what the weather is doing outside, because snow insulates. That is warmer than a Lapland night and colder than any bedroom you have used. You sleep in a heavy sleeping bag rated for it, on an ice bed, wearing thermal layers.

People sleep less than usual. Not because it is unbearable, but because you keep waking up to check whether you are still warm, and because a room made of frozen water makes no noise at all. That is why the resort sells it as one night alongside a glass igloo rather than as a three-night stay. One night on ice is a story. Three would be a grudge.

Practical points that catch people out: leave anything battery-powered outside the sleeping bag at your peril, because cold kills phone batteries fast, and take everything you might want in the night into the bag with you. The bathroom and toilet are shared and down the corridor, which the resort’s own pages never quite say out loud. Plan for a walk in the cold at 03:00, and weigh that against a rate near 700€ for two.

The glass igloo night, honestly

The igloo is the room most people are really booking, and it is a proper hotel room rather than an endurance test. Listings show a breakfast buffet included, plus free entry to the SnowHotel and the ice sculptures during the ice season. That entry matters: walking through the snow hotel is a short visit, and paying separately for it when you are sleeping next door would be irritating.

Heated floors, a private bathroom with a shower and an integrated aurora alarm come as standard in the igloos. The alarm is the feature worth having. Aurora activity peaks whenever it feels like it, usually late at night, and nobody stays awake staring upwards for four consecutive nights. Being woken by the room instead of by your own willpower is the difference between seeing the lights and hearing about them at breakfast.

The glass is a full dome rather than a panel above the pillow, so the igloo faces upward in all directions. That sounds like marketing until you lie down and realise you can track the whole arc of the sky without moving. On the lake side there is an open horizon, so a low aurora band along the northern edge is visible rather than hidden behind trees. None of that guarantees anything: cloud cover is the constraint in Lapland, not latitude, and a run of grey nights happens in every month of the season. Three nights gives you a fair chance, one night is a coin flip.

The standard igloo is about 20 m² and sleeps two; a family version runs to 33 m² with four beds. What it is not is a wilderness cabin. The igloos sit in a cluster on the lake shore with neighbours either side, so the view upward is private and the view sideways is not. If you want solitude rather than sky, this is the wrong product at the right price.

Ice restaurant and bar operate on site from 15 December to 31 March. Budget for resort prices rather than town prices.

The 2026-27 seasons

Two different calendars run here, and confusing them is the most common booking mistake. The glass igloos have three price seasons; the ice has one.

If your trip lands in late November, there is no snow hotel to sleep in and no ice bar to drink in. You get glass igloos on a lake, which is fine, but it is half the property. If the ice is the point, you need 15 December at the earliest and 31 March at the latest.

Getting there

Rovaniemi airport is the arrival point, with connections through Helsinki from the UK and most of Europe. From the airport or the town centre, Sinettä is roughly 30 minutes by road. There is no useful bus and there is nothing walkable at the other end.

Three ways to handle it. The package transfer, which is included in the combination packages and removes the problem entirely. A taxi, which works but costs both ways and needs pre-booking for the return. Or a hire car, which I would take if I were staying more than one night, because it turns Sinettä into a base rather than a place you are stuck in after 17:00.

Food is the other reason to have a car. There is nothing else open in Sinettä at night. Eat in Rovaniemi first, or eat what the resort serves.

Who it suits, and who should look elsewhere

It suits couples and families who want both experiences, ice and glass, in one booking with dinner and transfers arranged. It suits people on a short Rovaniemi trip who want one high-value night rather than a week of them. It suits anyone who values a black sky over a short walk to a bar.

It does not suit you if you want to be in the village, close to restaurants, Santa Claus Village and museums like the Arktikum. It does not suit a full week under glass, because seven nights in an igloo is a lot of money for a room you mostly sleep in.

Alternatives nearby

Around Rovaniemi, the obvious comparisons are Apukka Resort, Arctic TreeHouse Hotel and Glass Resort, each of which advertises its own take on glass-roofed or panorama-window rooms. Further north in Saariselkä, Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort is the original glass igloo resort. What none of the four has is a full-size snow hotel next door, and that remains the specific reason to choose Sinettä. The pages below go through what each one actually offers.

Booking timing

The resort was already taking bookings for the 2027-28 season in August 2026. Read that again: more than a year out. That tells you how the Christmas and New Year window behaves, and it tells you the December to early January dates go first.

If you want the snow hotel in late December, book by spring at the latest. For January to March, a few months out is usually enough outside school holidays. For the autumn glass season from 1 September, you have far more room, and that is also where the rate is lowest. Whatever the season, prices climb as availability drops, so an early booking here is a genuine saving rather than a nudge. If you are still weighing Lapland regions before you pick a hotel, Visit Finland is a reasonable starting point for the official picture.

How we researched this

Facts on seasons, room features, packages and the snow hotel opening date come from arcticsnowhotel.fi (English and Finnish pages). The nightly rates come from live Booking.com listings for the property, sampled for a September night and a midweek night in mid-December. Nobody from Lapland Trip Planner has stayed here; the verdict is a researched comparison, not a review.

Common questions

Written by Ville Laukkanen

Ville is a Finn who runs Lapland Trip Planner. The site is a researched planning guide: hotel rates come from Booking.com listings and activity prices from the operators' own pages, each dated, and nothing is presented as a personal stay or trip unless it was one.