Eco-Friendly Hotels in Soomaa — Your 2026 Guide to Sustainable Stays

The Fifth Season: Estonia's Most Unusual Spring

Between late March and early May, snowmelt from the Sakala uplands pours into Soomaa's rivers — the Halliste, Raudna and Lemmjõgi — and the floodplain becomes a shallow sea covering up to 170 square kilometres. Roads close, villages like Kõpu turn into islands, and locals and visitors alike switch to dugout canoes. The tradition is ancient: the haabjas, a hollowed-out aspen canoe, is built using a technique passed down for generations and is now on UNESCO's intangible heritage list.

Paddling the fifth season is a bucket-list experience — gliding over submerged meadows, between willow thickets and past rooftops, with swans and geese arriving on migration. Flood tours run from Kõpu with local guides who know exactly when the water is at its best; in a big flood year, you can paddle right up to village fences and even through farmyards. The rest of the year, the same canoes are used for guided river trips through the park's quiet backwaters.

Bog Walking, Boardwalks and Birdlife

Soomaa's raised bogs are its other signature: vast, cushion-like expanses of sphagnum moss, dwarf pines and cotton grass. The Riisa bog boardwalk (about 5 km round trip) gives everyone easy access to a panoramic viewing tower over the bog — at sunrise it is one of Estonia's great sights. For something more adventurous, join a bog-shoe walk: strap on oversized snowshoe-like frames and literally walk across the bog's floating surface, bouncing gently with every step.

The park is a birdwatcher's prize: black storks, golden eagles, lesser spotted eagles, cranes and dozens of wader species breed here, along with Europe's densest beaver population outside Scandinavia — you will see their lodges and dams on almost any canoe trip. Late summer brings the crane migration, when thousands gather at the park's edges before flying south, and autumn colours turn the bogs crimson and gold.

Where to Stay and How to Visit Soomaa

Base yourself in Kõpu village, the park's gateway, or in the nearby towns of Viljandi, Pärnu or Tori. Accommodation ranges from guesthouses and farm stays around Kõpu (rooms from about €45 a night) to the Kõpu Hostel and riverside camping. From Tallinn, Soomaa is a 2.5-hour drive or train to Viljandi then a local bus; from Pärnu it is under an hour.

The park has no entrance fee and its trails are free; guided canoe and bog-shoe tours are run by licensed local operators. Book your stay through IMPT the same price as Booking.com and every booking removes 1 tonne of UN-verified CO₂ — 28 times the carbon an average hotel night produces. New members get €5 free credit, and you earn 5% back on every stay, 3% of it funding verified carbon projects. Send a carbon voucher to a fellow traveller and they can choose the exact project their removal funds.

How IMPT Makes Your Soomaa Stay Carbon-Negative

Here's the maths. An average hotel night produces roughly 35 kg of CO₂ — from air conditioning, laundry, lighting, and food service. When you book any Soomaa hotel through IMPT, we retire 1,000 kg of UN-verified carbon removal credits. That's 28 times what your stay produces. Not carbon-neutral — carbon-negative.

The cost to you? Zero. IMPT funds the removal from its booking commission. You pay the standard nightly rate — in fact, IMPT offers the same rate as Booking.com on the same room, with carbon removal built in. The carbon credits are tokenised on Ethereum, retired against a named project, with a public retire code anyone can verify. No double-counting. No greenwashing. Just verified carbon removal, every night.

• €5 free credit when you sign up — applied to your first Soomaa booking
• 5% back on every stay — 3% funds carbon projects, 2% as travel credit
• 8M+ hotels worldwide, 195 countries — Soomaa is just the start
• Free cancellation on most rates, typically up to 48 hours before check-in

Beyond Hotels — More Ways IMPT Works in Soomaa

Shop through IMPT's 25,000+ retail partners for up to cashback on purchases that also offset carbon. Send someone a trip credit gift to visit Soomaa — IMPT plants trees with named farmers, GPS-tagged and photo-verified.

For business travel, IMPT's B2B Corporate Travel platform gives you exclusive rates, automatic ESG reporting, and a single dashboard tracking every booking's carbon impact. Companies with CSRD compliance needs get automated sustainability reporting out of the box.

Interested in running IMPT in Estonia? Country Ownership offers 50% revenue share on every transaction from Estonia-registered users, with 8% APY staking yield. Book a call →