Santa Claus Holiday Village is one company inside Santa Claus Village, not the village itself. It is a 171-apartment cottage and suite operation at Tähtikuja 2, where every apartment has its own sauna and breakfast is included. Sharing the same site are Glass Resort, Santa's Igloos Arctic Circle with 71 glass igloos, Nova Skyland Hotel near the Santa Claus Office, Elves Hotels and Santa's Luxury Boutique Villa, all independent of it. And Santa's Hotel Santa Claus, despite the name, is not at the village at all – it is in the middle of Rovaniemi, eight kilometres away.
The single most useful fact about accommodation at Santa Claus Village is that
the village is a place, not a company. It is a site on the Arctic Circle about
eight kilometres north of Rovaniemi, and more than fifty businesses operate on
it – shops, the Santa Claus Office, the post office, activity operators and, in
among them, at least six separate hotels.
Several of those hotels have names built from the same four words. That is the
whole source of the confusion, and it is worth twenty minutes before booking.
Santa Claus Holiday Village is a hotel
It is one of the businesses on the site, at Tähtikuja 2, and it is the largest
of them: 171 apartments in a mix of classic and superior cottages, several
grades of suite, and glass igloo cottages. Breakfast, towels, linen and the
final clean are included as standard, and every apartment has its own
sauna.1
That last detail is the one that distinguishes it from a normal hotel. A
private sauna per unit is not a
luxury upgrade in Finland so much as the
expected fitting in a cottage, and it changes the shape of an evening with
children more than most people expect. What a sauna and an ice dip cost visitors in Rovaniemi has its own page.
The village’s own accommodation listing names the others, and they are
genuinely different products rather than variations on
one.2
Glass Resort – glass apartments rather than igloos: 24 premium and three
deluxe, plus a lodge. Apartment-shaped, with a glass roof over part of it.
Santa’s Igloos Arctic Circle – 71 glass igloos with their own reception
and restaurant. The largest igloo operation on the site.
Nova Skyland Hotel – beside the Santa Claus Office, which makes it the
shortest walk to the thing most people came for.
Elves Hotels Santa Village – an apartment hotel.
Santa’s Luxury Boutique Villa and Apartments – the top end of the site.
One more is worth naming because it appears in the same searches and is not
there: Arctic Snowhotel & Glass Igloos is thirty kilometres from the
village, which is a taxi rather than a walk.
Tripadvisor ratings, 18 Rovaniemi operators
Highest first
Snowtrail Safaris 5.0
Nordic Odyssey 5.0
Nordic Adventures 4.9
Arctic GM 4.9
Book Lapland 4.9
Bearhill Husky 4.9
Arctic Attitude 4.9
StayLapland 4.8
Wild About Lapland 4.7
Wild Nordic 4.7
Lapland Winter Park 4.6
Safartica 4.5
Nordic Unique Travels 4.5
Apukka Resort 4.4
Lapland Welcome 4.3
Arctic Circle Snowmobile Park 4.3
Arctic Circle Husky Park 4.2
Raitola 3.4
<44.04.55.0
Ratings read from Tripadvisor. The shaded compartment left of the divider holds any score below 4.0. We record the score only; review counts and review text are not part of our comparison.
The one that is not at the village at all
Santa’s Hotel Santa Claus is a large hotel in the middle of Rovaniemi, at
Korkalonkatu 29, and it is eight kilometres from Santa Claus Village. It is a
perfectly good hotel and it is the wrong one to book if you pictured waking up
beside the Arctic Circle line.
This is the mistake we see most often, and it is entirely understandable: the
names are three of the same words in a different order.
What Santa’s Hotel Santa Claus actually is
sets out who it suits – read that one if you want a city hotel, and this one if
you want to be on the site.
Choosing between them
The useful questions are not about the rooms, which are comparable, but about
where on the site you land and what you want the mornings to be.
Closest to Santa: Nova Skyland, then Santa Claus Holiday Village.
A glass roof: Santa’s Igloos for the classic igloo shape, Glass Resort
for something more like an apartment. Read the FAQ above on what the light
pollution does before paying the premium, and
the northern lights guide for what a
tour out of town does instead.
A kitchen and a sauna, with children: Santa Claus Holiday Village or
Elves Hotels. The self-catering shape of these is worth more on a five-day
trip than any amount of design.
Evenings in a town: none of them. Stay in Rovaniemi and come out for the
day – and if the alternative you are weighing is a cabin somewhere quieter,
how far out is too far sets out
which rings around the city work without a car; the
guide to meeting Santa Claus explains
why the meeting itself costs nothing and what the paid tours actually buy,
which changes the case for staying on site considerably.
This page is an independent guide. We have no connection to any of the
businesses named here, and none of them has any say in what it says.
Is staying at the village better than staying in town?
It depends entirely on what the rest of the week is. Staying on the site means you can walk to the Santa Claus Office and the Arctic Circle line at eight in the morning before the coaches arrive, which is genuinely the best hour of the day there. It also means eight kilometres between you and Rovaniemi's restaurants, shops and the museum, on a bus that does not run late. Families doing one big Santa day usually prefer the town; families doing three days of it prefer the village.
Do the glass igloos at the village actually work for the northern lights?
Partly, and the honest limit is light rather than glass. The village is a lit visitor attraction with an airport next to it, so the sky above it is nothing like the sky over a dark lake twenty minutes out. A strong display will still show, and lying in bed for it is a real pleasure. A weak one, which is most of them, will be washed out. If the aurora is the reason for the trip rather than a bonus, the glass roof is not the thing to spend the money on.
Why do so many of them have almost the same name?
Because the place name is not a trademark anybody holds exclusively, and several unrelated businesses have built names around it. Santa Claus Holiday Village, Santa's Igloos Arctic Circle, Santa's Luxury Boutique Villa and Santa's Hotel Santa Claus are four different companies, and only three of them are at the village. When booking, check the street address rather than the name: Tähtikuja and Joulumaantie are at the village, Korkalonkatu is the city centre.
Lapland Handbook is written by its editorial staff in Rovaniemi. Every price, age limit and group size in a comparison is read from the operator's own page and marked "Not stated" when the operator does not publish it. Each guide names who should not book, and names the operator that suits each kind of group, whichever it is.
Rovaniemi's winter tours do sell out – December and the week around New Year first, and the small-group ones before the rest. Booking here goes straight to the operator at their own published price, and the code LH10 takes 10% off it.
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