Grand Hotel Lapland

“Great value for the price.”

Good breakfast. Nice and spacious dining area. Friendly staff. A bit difficult to find parking for car in the vicinity of the hotel.

“Beautiful Hotel super place to view Northern Lights, let down by somewhat sloppy management”

I am writing this review in English as our group of 96 people was international. I have spent over 2000 nights of my life in hotels, mainly on business, so have become, I guess,a bit critical. The hotel environment itself was great, with expensively-fitted high standard modern rooms and a magnific… more

I am writing this review in English as our group of 96 people was international. I have spent over 2000 nights of my life in hotels, mainly on business, so have become, I guess,a bit critical. The hotel environment itself was great, with expensively-fitted high standard modern rooms and a magnificent sauna area on the fourth floor and a rooftop Infinity pool and Jacuzzi on the fifth. We arrived shortly before 9 pm when it was dark. The areas where competent management should have seen improvements or as follows: 1.. The hotel reception had sensibly written the names of each room occupant, 96 of them for about 50 rooms, on the key card holder for each room in advance . However, they had a single person on reception who was handing these out individually, on request, resulting in a long slow queue. Fortunately, one of our tour guides spoke to reception and laid the cards out on the reception counter for rapid access. It should not require a tour guide to teach reception management their jobs 2. The hotel had two lifts, one modern and rapid which did not access all floors, the other was slow and accessed all the lower floors. There was no signage to indicate which was which. This meant that around 50 groups of people had to individually ask the single receptionist. I needed the slower lift which had two faults. The first was that the call buttons did not illuminate when the lift had been called, so you did not know if your call had been answered. The second fault was that the load alarm, which is an important safety feature to prevent the lift being overloaded, was defective, albeit in the right direction. THIS MEANT THAT A LIFT DESIGNED FOR TWELVE PEOPLE, 900kg, SHOWED AN OVERLOAD CONDITION WHEN FOUR PEOPLE, SAY 380kg, ENTERED WHICH STOPPED THE LIFT. WHEN THE LIFT NEEDS TO TRANSPORT 30 PEOPLE,, THIS CAUSES A HUGE DELAY TO TIRED TRAVELLERS. A MANAGEMENT WHICH DOES NOT KNOW ITS LOAD SAFETY FEATURES ARE NOT WORKING PROPERLY IS CLEARLY DEFICIENT. 3. My room had an excellent summary information card prominency displayed on the desk, in English and Swedish. However, the landline telephone on the desk had no indication of the internal number to call for reception. So I used my mobile phone to call Hotel SWITCHBOARD number on an external line to ask a simple question. This is just sloppy. 4. The sauna and relaxing era on the fourth floor is super. However, the code locks on the clothes lockers have no instructions for use, Their usage is simple but the sequence for use is not absolutely obvious, since you need to press the ON button before setting the code and locking, as well as when unlocking. 5. When leaving the fourth floor after showering, there is absolutely NO SIGNAGE showing the way to the upstairs pool and jacuzzi either on the fourth floor, nor, much worse, on the fifth where it is located. To reach the pool , a wet showered customer on the fifth has to cross an unlit unstaffed bar onto an unlit terrace and then walk about 30 metres in darkness to an unlit stairway to access the unlit pool . I UNDERSTAND THE NEED FOR DARKNESS TO SEE THE MAGNIFICENT NORTHERN LIGHTS, BUT LOW INTENSITY GUIDANCE LIGHTS SHOULD BE POSSIBLE. We were helped to find the pool by a very helpful maintenance man. 6. The staircase between the fourth and fifth floors is of a shiny marble-like material which is dangerously slippery when wet. I slipped and fell on descending and was saved from a nasty tumbling fall by my grip on the handrail and decent upper body strength. Since people are likely to be wet when transitioning between floors this is not acceptable. The floor tiles in the shower and sauna area are not slippery when wet, so there is a possible solution. In summary, a super location and to view the northern lights from the rooftop pool area is a wonderful experience. The rooms and fittings are great, breakfast is super, and staff are really nice. But management needs to sharpen up its act!

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