Industry News
Ruka Ski Resort, Finland, has announced the construction of a scenic sauna restaurant at the top of Saarua, with giant windows that open directly to Valtavaara and Konttainen. Between baths, you can relax in the shelter of the covered terrace in the warm pool and lounge – enjoying the scenery and the fireplace. The development of the Ruka ski center will continue during the years 2024/25, with a sauna restaurant to be built at the top of Saarua, next to the gondola station. From the sauna restaurant, the views open towards the Valtavaara nature park and the northern sky.
A new landscape restaurant will also be built next to the sauna, serving as a lunch restaurant during the day and a dinner restaurant in the evening. In winter, you can access the sauna restaurant by ski, chair lift, or gondola. In summer, the restaurant is right next to the Karhunkierros hiking trail and near the starting points of Ruka Bike Park’s bike trails.
Ville Aho, Board Chairman of Rukakeskus Group, expressed his excitement at the new project, as a scenic restaurant was lacking at the Ruka Ski Resort. Rukakeskus Group operates the Ruka Ski Resort as well as Pyhä Ski Resort. Rukakeskus is owned by Aho Group, a Finnish family-operated business active in tourism and healthcare.
“I’m sure that the new sauna and restaurant will appeal to both our domestic and international customers and may even be a reason for many to choose Ruka as their destination.”
— Ville Aho
The restaurant will have approximately 150 customer seats and a spacious glazed terrace. Saunamaailma can accommodate approximately 30 bathers at a time in two-hour shifts. Rukakeskus envisages that the new mountain-top sauna restaurant will be completed by November 2025. The building permit for the project has already been granted. A competition will be held to find a name for the new sauna restaurant, which at the moment is referred to under the project name “Kiuas.”
Ruka has been busy updating the resort for more than 20 years, following the Ruka Masterplan created by the Canadian Ecosign planning office. This masterplan has turned Ruka into a year-round, internationally attractive mountain resort with two pedestrian villages and a network of Express chairlifts. Ruka’s villages have been designed to enable family-friendly holidays without the need for a car. In the summer of 2022, two new slopes and lifts designed for children and families, Mini Ruka and Ruka Park Junior, were built in Ruka’s popular Vuosseli and Bistro area. The investments in 2022 were in addition to the existing children’s slope, Family Park, and indoor play area Kids’ Club. On Finnish Independence Day, December 6, 2023, Ruka opened the renewed Masto slope area and a new 8-person chair lift.
Ruka Ski Resort is located slightly to the north of Kuusamo in the northeast of Finland, close to Lapland near the Arctic Circle, where temperatures regularly drop to -20°C (-4° Fahrenheit) during winter. Ruka offers 19.1 km (12 miles) of groomed slopes serviced by 22 lifts. Apart from alpine skiing and boarding, Ruka has a huge cross-country ski area with over 500 km (313 miles) of cross-country tracks as well as 600 km (375 miles) of snowmobile routes (of which 100 km (63 miles) are private snowmobile-safari routes). This entire winter sports wonderland in the Rukatunturi mountains is situated between 291 – 492 m (955 – 1,614 ft) of elevation, which is relatively low compared to ski areas in other countries, but its location ensures that there is natural snow on the ground for at least 200 days of the year.
Kuusamo can be reached by plane — the Kuusamo International Airport is located 7 km (4.4 miles) from the city center and 30 km (19 miles) from Ruka Ski Resort. Ruka is about 800 km from Helsinki (the capital of Finland), and flying time is just one hour. Alternatively, there are two other international airports less than 300 km away, Oulu and Rovaniemi (home to Santa Claus village).
Ruka‘s development continues to be strong, as the next Ruka’s highest-class Ski-Inn accommodation facility, also scheduled to open in November 2025, will also be announced in the near future.
