Northern Lights/Lapland for a reasonable price?

ripplyuk

My partner and I have been looking into a holiday in Lapland but they all seem extremely expensive. His main reason for going is the hope of seeing the northern Lights. I like the thought of huskies, reindeer etc, if possible.

Is there anywhere else that would be cheaper? We were also considering Iceland/Canada/Norway if we could get a good price. Or could anyone recommend a reasonably priced company for a package deal?

richardw

How much is reasonably priced?

ripplyuk

I guess anything cheaper than the prices I'm seeing! The packages all seem to work out around £1300 Per person for about 4 nights which seems crazy. I've found holidays for two weeks in Dubai for that price. Even the day trips are around £550.

We had thought it would be about £600-£700 each for 4 nights but clearly not!

richardw

How much is it if you book flights and hotel separately?

ripplyuk

We'd prefer a package deal because I've been told it's less risky and you have more protection legally if anything goes wrong with a tour operator. Is it generally cheaper to do things separately? Maybe it would be worth the risk.

richardw

Price up the £1300 package separately just to see how much it would be and then do a comparison.

Shimrod

ripplyuk wrote: »

We had thought it would be about £600-£700 each for 4 nights but clearly not!

Iceland seems to be the cheapest place to go if you want a reasonable chance of seeing the Northern Lights. As an alternative, you could head up to the very north of Scotland, and you may get lucky there...

You don't mention where you are travelling from, but from Manchester it is around £550 for return flights on Icelandair, £340 on Easyjet (with hold luggage) - that's for two people. There's a mix of accomodation in Iceland, but £100 per night will get you a nice hotel. Northern Lights trips can be booked for around £26pp, Golden Circle (Thingvellar national park, Geysir and Gulfoss) is around £50pp. Alternatively you can hire a car - driving in Iceland is very easy, outside of Reykjavik there is very little traffic (and very few roads), so it is difficult to get lost. There's not a huge amount to do in Reykjavik itself, but you can fill a couple of days with sight seeing, and you can do whale watching trips from the harbour.
If you want a package, have a look at the flight and hotel deals that can be booked through the likes of Expedia and Thomas Cook. That will remove your concerns over the flight/hotel.

Alternatively, it's around £350 (per couple) to fly to Tromso, which is another popular location to go in search of the Northern Lights. I've not been to Tromso, but here's the tripadvisor guide to hotels and other attractions http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Tourism-g190475-Tromso_Troms_Northern_Norway-Vacations.html

zenmaster

£185 cheap enough?

It's in November, mind, so it'll be pretty chilly.

There's always Iceland trips on Travelzoo.

ripplyuk

Thanks so much everyone, I knew it could be done cheaper! I think it'll be Iceland for us.

daveyjp

Iceland also has reasonable day to day living costs, similar to UK. The same cannot be said for Tromso- 3-5 times UK costs.

mum2one

I went to Lapland the yr before, we paid £2,200 which included pre-booking husky and reindeer trips (as they worked out about £350 ish of the bill) although was 1 child x 1 adult, the hotel we had to pay as 2 adults the trips as 1 x adult and 1 x child.

We stayed at an all inclusive hotel - but were further away from seeing the northern lights. we had a small preview of them. (our all inclusive was very small compared to general all in (we had, wine, soft drinks, tea, coffee, berry juice, 3 meals and snacks in afternoon).

The issue for us, was stay nearer where we would have a better chance of seeing the lights, but only on b+b, looking at cost of meals (that was looking at £80 for lunch and evening meal for the 2 of us) that was without the drinks.....

In our hotel - a hot choc was 10 euros, kids hot choc 5 euros, - if you wanted vodka and coke - you'd be looking at anything up to 20 euros.

xx