Art Hotel Honkahovi

We wanted to visit the new Gösta museum and Honkahovi was a natural place to spend a night. Our room was ready and we had a great lunch at the hotel. It was a buffet and the food was typical tasty Finnish food. The walls in the restaurant had nice art and there is a very special big window with a nice view to the lake. We also stayed in the kings room. The hotel has interesting industrial history and we enjoyed our time there. The room is very cozy and little old fashioned. We had a good relaxing stay there. The breakfast was also a good Finnish meal. The staff is excellent.

Location is very nice with a lake view. We stayed one night in a Superior room. It was a great disaappointment as the room did not have a private bath room against the room description on the hotel's web site. Bath room was out of date and lacked the basic accessories. There was no air conditioning and the air quality in the room was stuffy. The room interior was quite dreary. The breakfast was ok but basic. Overall, the price-quality ratio was weak in my opinion.

We stayed at the hotel during our trip to see the Serlachius art museums. Although the hotel reception was closed, and breakfast was at Mäntän Klubi, rather than on site, the overall experience was excellent. Beautiful, clean room with stunning views toward the lake. We were able to get assistance by phone when needed. Customer service was friendly. We did a morning dip to the lake in the morning, which was nice. All in all, a great experience, especially considering the reasonable price.

This is a unique hotel in a beautiful 1940’s villa that has plenty of history. The rooms are true to the old style, which is fantastic. However, this also means that you may need to share a bathroom – like in an old-fashioned hotel. Please note that the economy rooms are not nearly as nice, but you ofcourse get to enjoy the atmosphere of the villa otherwise.||||The villa is architecturally really beautiful and it has a big, green garden right to the water’s edge. There’s a jetty where you can sit and admire the view and a possibility to have a sauna by the lakeside. ||||The breakfast is served at a room with an amazing window to the lake. The breakfast is simple but adequate, also true to the old style: no frills.||||The hotel has a nice bistro menu and they offer a good lunch, too.

When arriving, it took us some time to realize that you had to check in at the cafeteria. We took lunch there as well and it was an average buffet by Finnish standards. Quite ok, but nothing special. Our spacious, well furnished room shared a bathroom with the next room. There was a bath tub, but as a courtesy to the adjoining room we went bathing in the very nice sauna (included) by the lake instead. In the evening we used the kitchen downstairs to heat some pizza in the microwave. The breakfast next morning was the weakest part of our stay. Limited choices, but the worst thing was the presentation and that the food was not replenished in a timely manner. ||If it was not for the breakfast, we would have given this place a 4.

A small hotel of some 10 rooms, located in the beautiful former home of a paper mill owner. A gem of functionalistic architecture of the 1930s. ||A big minus was the lack of bathrooms and toilets - something you would not expect from a hotel placed in a unique house like this. It seems that the the plumbing was close to its original form, including one bathroom + toilet to be shared by a pair of two rooms. Except for the 4 smallest rooms “economy”, that shared one toilet in foyer, and a legend of a bathroom somewhere in the premises. However, that bathroom did not exist in the main building, and there were. no instructions how to find it in the room. Luckily, our party had booked several rooms, so we were able to share one bathroom. ||Nevertheless, this hotel was worth visiting for 1 night, but a longer period without a bath room would have been problematic. ||The rooms are spacious, well furnished and with nice views - one side to the lake and the other to the park. Also the breakfast was good, and the service most kind.

The location of this "hotel" is gorgeous, in it's own grounds on the shore of the lake with a lovely lawn and pine trees between the hotel and the lake, with small sauna and jetty next to the shore. It's peaceful and wonderfully relaxing. However the building itself is something between a hotel and a bed and breakfast. Many of the rooms have shared bathrooms, sometimes down the hall and sometimes placed between two rooms (so you run the risk of those in the room on the other side of the bathroom coming in at the same time. You must lock the opposite door when inside and remember to unlock it (otherwise they will not be able to get in when you've finished)). Quite what this is like noise wise is another issue - you effectively have strangers using a bathroom attached to your room!! There is plenty of noise from the corridor and loud fire door at the foot of the stairs, the owners should have replaced the room doors with soundproof ones. You will not only hear people arriving and leaving but also going to the bathroom (those people with bathrooms along the hall). This noise and disturbance is a bit sad since otherwise the hotel is wonderfully peaceful especially if you have a room overlooking the lake. ||The rooms can get quite hot in the summer because there is no ventilation window with fly screen. So you either open the window and run the risk of mosquitos coming in (and being next to the forest and lake means there will be plenty!!) or sit with the window (and balcony door if you have one) closed. No electric fans were available and we arrived during a period of 25-30degree temps so it was more than warm inside the rooms !!! I do not agree with the Finnish principle that hot rooms are something you put up with due to the winters being so long!! ||I feel that the noise and ventilatin issues could be resolved but with most accommodation in Finland it's full in the summer and pretty empty outside the main Finnish holiday season (July and first two weeks of august). Would more customers come if they improved the hotel - no, because it will be full in the six week holiday period anyway. So hotels have no incentive to make their accommodations better.||If arriving out of hours you need to check with the hotel for entry details, there are no staff after 9pm and on Sunday only until 12:00 lunchtime. By no staff I mean the ONLY people in the building are guests and you get in through the front door with an access code! So this might be a bit of a surprise to those not used to this kind of minimal Finnish staffing. ||The minimalism applies to housekeeping also, in our two night stay the bins were emptied but beds not tidied or dirty mugs/plates taken away. This is not a major issue but just something to get used to. The long term cleaning is rather suspect too, in our wardrobe was a left over hair curler and the cleaner is obviously not that tall since the top shelf in the wardrobe (which is at about 180cm high since I could look down on it) was covered in dust. ||Breakfast was reasonable although hours rather limited and it's finished by 930am Monday-Friday. This is a bit soon in my opinion especially during the holiday season. ||On a good side there is a small kitchen for guests to use with a microwave, plates, cutlery, large fridge etc and by arrangement they can leave you provisions for breakfast or late supper if you are arriving/departing at odd hours.||With regards to booking this is a bit of a disaster. Their internet booking engine is probably the worst I've seen. ALL the rooms have the warning "some rooms have a shared bathroom" even though cheaper and expensive rooms are listed (the more expensive ones have their own bathroom). The prices if you choose "2 adults" show the same room twice, once as a single and once as a double (with single price about 1.8x the price of the same room as a double). HOWEVER you should AVOID BOOKING VIA THE INTERNET since other reviews here have said that after booking people have turned up and the room is not available and that is exactly what happened to the couple in front of us when we were checking in. We read the reviews and called ahead and booked over the phone - we also got in writing the type of the room and proof that it had its own bathroom.||So in summary a lovely location but could do better on several fronts.

Lovely place and location. Very nice and friendly employes. A l carte food was very tasty but breakfast was a big dissapointment cold boiled eggs, a very narrow range of bread, no marmelade for croissants small things but many enough to give the impression of not meeting up to the level of the overall expectation.