Star Arctic Hotel, Saariselkä: Glass Cabins, Sauna Suites, Prices and Is It Worth It

Updated 5 October 2026.

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Star Arctic Hotel sits on the top of Kaunispää fell above Saariselkä, where north-facing glass roofs look out over the fells and Urho Kekkonen National Park. It is built for aurora trips and the view, and it opens for the winter season only.

What Star Arctic Hotel is, and where it sits

It is a four-star fell-top hotel on Kaunispää in Saariselkä, also sold as Star Arctic Hotel & Activities. The views take in the village, Urho Kekkonen National Park and the surrounding fells.

The “& Activities” part is not decoration. Husky safaris, snowmobiling, reindeer experiences, aurora hunting, ice fishing and cultural programmes are all sold through the hotel and priced separately from the room. If you book a room only, you are booking a bed and a view, not an itinerary.

Rooms, cabins and suites compared

Four room categories, and they are genuinely different products rather than the usual small/medium/large. The Scenic View Suite is a two-floor room with a double bed or twin beds upstairs beside a large north-facing window, and a sofa bed downstairs by a wall window facing south over Saariselkä. The Sauna Suite is 36 m² with a private sauna and a kitchenette with cutlery, and two of the twelve are two-storey with a loft bedroom. The Aurora Glass Cabin has a glass ceiling over the bed with the roof facing north, plus a private toilet and shower. The Aurora Sauna Suite is a spa suite with a queen-size double bed and a glass wall out to the snow.

A Scenic View Suite for two was 204€ a night in late November and 431€ in mid-January and mid-March. A Sauna Suite was 266€ in late November, and the Sauna Suites and Aurora Glass Cabins were 575€ in January and March.

Rates are Booking.com prices per night for two adults, checked at the end of September 2026. Prices are for the 2026-27 season and change annually, so check current rates for your dates.

What a night includes

Breakfast, WiFi and parking come with the room. Dining is Restaurant Kaunis with seasonal menus and cocktails plus the lounge bar, open 17:00 to 23:00 with the kitchen closing at 21:30, so plan evening meals around that.

The hotel also sells experience packages that bundle airport transfers, accommodation, a welcome package, full board (breakfast, lunch and a table-served dinner) and gear. Ask the hotel for a package quote for your dates.

Aurora odds on the fell top

Height is the whole argument. Saariselkä village throws light upward, and being on the summit puts you above most of it with a clean northern horizon, which is exactly what a north-facing glass roof needs. The lights most often appear in the north, and that is where these roofs point.

None of that changes the physics. Clear sky and solar activity decide whether you see anything, and neither is for sale. Check the Finnish Meteorological Institute’s aurora and space weather pages before you get excited about a forecast someone screenshotted on Instagram. Three nights gives you a fair chance in the dark months. One night gives you a lottery ticket.

Getting there, and getting up the hill

Fly to Ivalo, which is about 30 km away (Finavia lists the flights), then take a pre-booked transfer, a taxi or a hire car.

The final part is the fell road, and this is the practical catch. The village sits below you, and in winter darkness on a snow-packed hill, that is not a walk. Getting up and down means the hotel’s transfer, your own car or a taxi. If you want to drift between village restaurants and bars in the evening, you are booking the wrong hotel.

The season: 30 October to 4 April

The hotel is bookable from 30 October 2026 to 4 April 2027 and closed from 20 April to 29 October 2026. There is no summer option here, and no ruska (the autumn colour season, when the fells turn red and gold in September) either. If your trip is outside the snow months, you need a different base entirely, and the regional tourist board is the place to start looking.

Within the open season, midwinter is genuinely dark this far north. Around the solstice the sun does not clear the horizon at all, which is the kaamos (the polar night, the weeks when the sun stays below the horizon) and it means long blue twilight rather than black at noon. Good for aurora hunting. Less good if you wanted daylight photographs of the fells.

Practical warnings before you book

Three things catch people out. The hill, as above, which makes the hotel a self-contained bubble rather than a village base. The dining, which is one restaurant with one closing time, so a late arrival on a delayed flight can mean no hot meal that night. And the glass cabin’s size, which is fine for two and tight for three.

Who it suits, and who should look elsewhere

It suits aurora-first couples who want the best-pointed roof in the area, view seekers who care more about a north-facing window than about nightlife, and groups of four sharing a sauna suite where the per-person maths gets reasonable. It suits people who intend to buy activities anyway, since they are sold on site.

Look elsewhere if you are a family who wants the village on foot, if you want a choice of restaurants in the evening, or if your trip falls outside November to early April. And if the budget is fixed but the glass roof is optional, a Scenic View Suite in January costs 144€ a night less than the cabins while sitting on the same summit under the same sky.

Alternatives nearby

Northern Lights Village Saariselkä puts glass-roof cabins down at village level, which trades some of the horizon for convenience. Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort, about 10 km south, is the original igloo resort. Santa’s Hotel Tunturi is the large conventional hotel in the village itself, which is the honest choice for families who want shops, ski hire and restaurants within walking distance. Aurora Village Ivalo has glass-roof cabins in the forest, 15 minutes from Ivalo airport.

When to book

Late November is the cheapest window and still properly dark, which makes it the best value in the calendar. January and March are the aurora-season sweet spot at 431€ for a Scenic View Suite and 575€ for the glass cabins, with March adding useful daylight for activities.

December and the February ski week are a different game: they were not on sale on the booking sites at the end of September, so book those weeks with the hotel directly, and early.

How I researched this

Non-price facts come from stararctichotel.com in September 2026: room types and counts, the season dates, the restaurant hours and what the packages include. Nightly rates are Booking.com rates as shown on Google Hotels on 28 and 30 September 2026, for two adults on the dates in the rate table. 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.