Pairi Daiza in Belgium has had hotels open in the heart of the zoo for several years now – it started with The Paddling Bear hotel, and has now extended to rooms in both the Last Frontier and Land of the Cold areas. You can lie in bed or lounge on the sofa overlooking tigers, walruses, penguins, bears and more! We opted to choose a polar bear room – here there are 3 levels of options, an ‘eye-to-eye’ view which has water around 2/3rds of the way up the window so you get great views when the bears are swimming, a ‘from above’ view which is just about in the eyeline of the polar bears on the ground, and a ‘birds eye’ view another floor up giving you a great sweeping view across the whole habitat. I was very happy with our ‘from above’ view over the lovely polar bears!
There are two different polar bear buildings, we were in Greenland in the ‘middle’ of the 5 rooms on the ground floor of the building. The view really was great – the polar bears didn’t spend much time in the water, so having that water-level room wasn’t giving a huge advantage. One of the extras included with staying at the hotel was that there were breakfast feedings of several of the animals before the park opened to day guests – we chose to watch the polar bear feeding, the keeper came along and encouraged the polar bears to get in the water by throwing in their breakfast, this was the only time we saw them in the water. The cost of the stay also includes one dinner and breakfast per night, for us this was in the Izba restaurant where both meals were buffets. The food was good and there was plenty of it, and I loved the decor of the restaurant, it was very Frozen-esque in design. Staying in the hotels also gives you 24 hour access to both the Last Frontier and Land of the Cold areas, which I love the idea of however as we were there in October it got dark relatively early, so this would be great in the Summer months.
Where else to stay
The main The Paddling Bear hotel building offers the most affordable accommodation in the park, with a number of rooms overlooking the sea lions out front. There is also a restaurant in this hotel, Octopus, which I’ve eaten in before in 2020 which was amazing. This area also has a number of lodges, where deer can walk right up on the front deck, and also has the Full Moon Lodges which are immersed with the bears. This year in 2024 new rooms have opened called the Farmhouse Lodges which are close to the old entrance (the new one opened last year and really looks amazing) and the domestic farmyard animals – I’m thinking I might choose these rooms for my next stay!
