I have no idea, but that doesn’t bode well for anyone that wants to do the race who doesn’t yet have accommodations.

Oof. I never considered that would be a problem. Haven’t even looked yet. If I cannot confirm accommodations before my race I plan to qualify, I will skip.

Wow, that is weird. We booked our accommodations earlier in the Summer right after qualifying and had no issues finding hotels. I would be surprised if it is all booked this early in the qualification period.

Maybe some enterprising organization who knows the place will get booked up, already blocked all the rooms?? I have seen that before, and they go to bigger groups. Maybe call some hotels directly and see what the deal is?? Maybe some conflicting convention in town?

Yeah, I'll try connecting directly with some of the hotels and see how it goes.

I still feel like it must be something I am doing wrong in searching but I can't figure out what it is :).

I was going to start planning my trip over Xmas but on your prompt did a search and only see things 50km away (on expedia). If I am going to do that, I may just hang out in the Helsinki area (100km away) for most of the trip, just because the one time I was there for biz I enjoyed it.

Now i feel stupid for procastinating because I was literally in the second week of qualfiers from around the world in early July, but I am pretty bad and proactively planning travel. I just generally prefer to plan trips 2-3 weeks out.

Probably Ironman..........

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

If it's any consolation, I have been monitoring this for about three months and the hotels have been unavailable basically the whole time through the normal aggregation platforms. At first it was because they didn't support booking more than 12 months ahead but when that period rolled over they just showed unavailable anyway.

I am considering staying in Helsinki as well. I haven't been there but I will have a hire car and it looks like a really nice place to stay. I have also seen that the events often start in the early afternoon in that part of the world which might make it even easier to be based in Helsinki.

Even with all that, I am still keen to understand why they are all showing as booked out this far in advance and I would love to stay at least a few days in Lahti if it works out to be possible.

Mind you, I haven't qualified yet so I might be getting well and truly ahead of myself.

One of our athletes booked accommodation this week in Lahti, but he booked it through the Ironman Official Travel Partner: https://registration.contio.fi/...n?id=1041-IRON703-68

Thanks for that link - I hadn't seen that. It looks like maybe they have snapped up all the accomodation to have the bookings go through this partners. Cancelation policy looks pretty reasonable (at least for those booking this early) so this could well be the bit that I was missing.

Hello, have you guys tried to check on the neighboring village called Vierumäki?
It is a summer sports village that hosts the sports university and hosts several sports camps during the year.

I will be staying in Vierumäki.

If anyone needs some help, reach out to me and I can try to help as I am here in Finland.

Finn here as well, happy to help if I can. This seems really odd to me. Nothing available on those dates even though Lahti should have the capacity, as they host lots of big events there. The prices for the days surrounding that weekend are insane (on a Lahti standard). The weekend before is around 100e/night, while Wednesday-Friday (that should be cheaper) is 270e/night. How many have even qualified yet for this event? I wonder if some of the popularity is caused by spectators. Not racing tris anymore, but I was still considering driving there just to watch.

Very sorry for everyone who's planning on racing. I hope this gets sorted out.

Feel free to ask if there are any questions about traveling here for the race.

EDIT: About staying in Helsinki. I think it is a perfectly good option. The drive from Helsinki takes a bit over an hour. The train is about the same, and you can bring a bike if you book ahead. I am partial as I live in Helsinki (but visit Lahti frequently), but it's a nice city, and if you plan on staying longer I think Helsinki has a lot more to offer as a destination. For race prep Lahti is, however, much better. The area around Helsinki is sub-optimal for road biking, especially with a tri bike, but you can find nice roads about 15km outside the Helsinki city center. Both cities have indoor pools, and at least Helsinki has two outdoor 50m pools (but expect to share a lane with at least 10 other swimmers). No personal experience swimming in Lahti. For running both cities are great. In Helsinki you'll find good paths all around the city center, and there is a huge forest (Helsingin keskuspuisto) right by the city center if you prefer trail running.

I had the same issue, got a slot in September and looked for accommodation thinking there would be loads available as its so early in the qualifying period. Found nothing on any of the major hotel sites within 50k of Lahti.

Eventually I found a pretty basic apartment in Lahti for a reasonable price, but it has a 7 day minimum stay, luckily I work remotely and the apartment has wifi, so I am just having an extended trip and working from the apartment before taking a few days off closer to the event.

I looked on the official Ironman travel partner here in the UK - Nirvana. They have booked up all the rooms at the top few hotels in the search engines and are charging an insane price for them. Similar to the link someone provided up the thread.

Unfortunately I think this is just the game now for the big races, book very early or risk paying A LOT!

we contacted the race hotel directly weeks ago and they said they didnt have room availability, then Nirvana opened theirs up, a quote from them for family of 4 means we need 2 rooms as no family rooms is £2400 for 4 nights !!!

We have since gone back to Sokos hotel and it seems they are working with the Finish tourist board to sell rooms so might be worth checking with them as well. We have emailed and they replied that they would provide a response but that was a week ago and still nothing.

We are also now contemplating a 50km journey into the race day :-(

I doubt this is much help for you, but there are still a few rooms left in the apartment block I booked. It is super basic / not particularly nice, but has a bed, space for bikes and something resembling a kitchen which is all I really need.


https://www.forenom.com/apartments/lahti/forenom-apartments-rauhankatu-16/569/?checkin=%222023-08-20%22&checkout=%222023-08-27%22&occupants=1


a couple of weeks ago, all the room types had loads of availability, so i doubt it will be long before these are gone.

Ironman and their official travel partners have booked up literally every hotel room not just in Lahti but all the surrounding areas and are charging an enormous mark-up.

It truly infuriates me when the race is in a small town with limited accommodation options, and now there are pretty much no options within about an hour’s drive if you don’t want to pay an arm and a leg.

Now the European Middle Distance Championships have been scheduled for the same date in Belgium I will likely do that instead (I also haven’t qualified yet for Lahti, so the decision may be out of my hands anyway!)

seems crazy they did this the same weekend, its almost like no one talks to each other! It's a shame as I met the critera to be on the GB team and would have been up for representing my country, but I've already unloaded a large % of my paycheck on Finland!

If I can get on the train from Helsinki to Lahti with my bike, this seems like a perfectly good option (no traffic, bike to train station with gear on backpack), get off train, bike to check in, drop off bike, hang out, take train back, get up next day, get on train go to Lahti and take bus/taxi to race site. Seems doable based on my previous experience getting around Europe on bike + train...totally different than here in North America.

Years ago, I had the plan to race the Finlandia Hihto and do the 75km class + 75 km XC ski race....after a 5 year hiatus due to broken body parts, I am thinking about some XC ski trips again....I am sure for that event there is plenty of space in Lahti, as much of Scandinavia and Northern Europe head over?

When I search 1 day at a time I can see a couple options but not many.

AirBnB seems to have a few options within 30k, could be worth checking.

There's been some good info already. The link posted by Whittlefit provides some reasonable pricing under the circumstances and cancellation policy is good. As a side note (having stayed there) Vierumaki is a nice facility for training for sure, Athletics track, pool , trails to run, good roads to ride etc...

Races in Lahti have always started later in the day given the sunlight until late at night at that time of year. I do not expect any different with the World Champs.

One advantage of staying closer to Helsinki and particularly the airport is you would be very very close to Kuusijärvi, this is one of the top open water swim training spots for finnish triathletes (Kuusijärventie 3, 01260 Vantaa, Finland)

If one stays toward airport area e.g. Flamingo Park (if you want water slide park for family) you are looking at more like 65-70mins to Lahti in car.

Hope that helps,

(I live in Helsinki)

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David T-D
http://www.tilburydavis.com

Did Ironman / it’s partners see the demand / price increase in Kona and then artificially create it in Finland?

I think they did.

I find that awful.

I seriously wanted to shoot for this race and try to qualify but looks like accommodations right now in Lahti are next to impossible if you want a full kitchen. Nothing on AirB&B within Lahti. Nice, France was so easy for the WC. Got an amazing top floor AirB&B walking distance to everything right in Nice. Wasn't crazy expensive either. It was awesome. Not sure how fun it would be to drive an hour and back to pick up race packet, then drive to transition to drop off bike the next day and then drive to on race morning. That seems like a lot of time in the car. But maybe it's worth it?

ETA: too bad the race wasn't held in Helsinki.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Pricing doesn’t look that bad on the travel partner link. Perhaps people are confused that the rates quoted are for entire length of stay?

Most options do require some train/car travel to the venue. For Lahti locals, what are the options that avoid trains and cars? Would Lahti proper suffice for that?

I hate to think about trying to drive around in some little euro car with the tri bike, reading Finnish road signs (Waze works there, I hope?).

Not to mention "petrol" is so much more expensive in Europe compared to our gas prices here in the US. Driving costs would add up and you would need a bigger vehicle for sure (small van maybe). I haven't driven around Finland but have driven a lot in Europe and haven't really had problems as GPS usually works well. After we did IM Copenhagen, we rented a car and drove out to visit an animal sanctuary in rural Denmark, 2 hours away. It was surprisingly super easy to find. Roads were totally fine.

Dev, mentioned taking a train but having dealt with trains in Copenhagen, getting our bikes from City Centre to the swim/T1, it was a bit of a project. You have to factor in time walking to the station and time walking from the station to the venue. We had to walk around 30 minutes from the train with our bikes to the T1/swim but we did make friends along the way. Oh and the biggest surprise was the train schedules changed on race morning getting to the start at something like 5am in the morning. And the drunk young people getting out of the clubs in the train station were very humorous. I'm digressing now, but the funniest thing was watching a young guy ride down an escalator flat on his back with his head towards the bottom floor (his friends were there and thought it was hysterical). At least the young Dane partiers were friendly. I'll never forget that morning.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.