incentive
INCENTIVE DESTINATION
DESTIN
The magical mystical
world of Finland
and the ice hotel
By Jennifer Rose-
Meckler, director,
Weekends Away
Corporate and Adventure
Breaks
Thus started the research
as to where we could
find an ice hotel that
could accommodate a group of 120
people at the best price in rand terms.
We found a number of countries
that had ice hotels around the northern
hemisphere, stretching from Canada across
to the Scandinavian countries and that there
was not only one in the world.
Finland was the most affordable option.
Now, of course you don’t want to spend four nights
in the ice hotel, keeping in mind that the temperature
inside is -5 degrees, and no, there are no heaters in
the bedrooms.
We needed to look at another hotel option for the
remaining evenings and we also needed to keep a
group that size entertained. Let me not get ahead of
myself though, and let’s start at the beginning.
WHERE IS FINLAND?
Finland forms part of the Scandinavian countries being
Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Part of Finland falls
into an area known as Lapland, which is a circle around
the North Pole and has a culture of its own with the
40 incentiveworld.com Vol. 9 No. 4 2009
After exploring many destinations (18 in fact) as
options for the next incentive, my client finally asked
the question – If you could go anywhere in the world
what would be on top of your list? “Well, the Ice
Hotel of course”, was my immediate answer.
reindeer people.
Each country has its own novel attraction. In Norway,
for instance, you might find some Goblins, and in Finland
you will find none other than Father Christmas in his
own special village. The village has a Post office where
all the children’s letters from around the world get sent
– even if the envelope is just marked Father Christmas. I
got to visit him and have become a believer.
The area that we chose to travel to was an area called
Kittila, close to Levi, which is the northern most part of
Finland. It is a big skiing area for Europeans as this is
always guaranteed and, of course, there is an ice hotel
built there annually.
HOW TO GET THERE
There is no direct flight from South Africa, so we
looked at every possible equation into Europe to find
the most cost effective route. No matter what we did,
it meant taking three flights to get there.
One can choose to go via Germany. However, the
connection times are tight so we therefore opted for
London. Whatever way you looked at it, there was
going to be up to 22 hours of flying time.
The journey was doable as we did not have to
contend with jet lag and there were decent periods on
the various flights to fall asleep.
The stopovers at various airports were not too
lengthy, just long enough to stretch our legs and check
out the shopping.
We arrived in Finland at almost midnight the
following day and were ready for bed, which in turn
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