Welcome to your cell, the Meripuisto will make any stay seem like a lifetime sentence. With rooms the size of tiny closets, bathrooms the size of a water heater and no amenities, other than dishrag size towels, whats not to love.

The bed sleeps as though its a livestock feeding trough with a few old blankets thrown on it, if you are six feet tall or over, expect cold feet. And don't even think about turning over. As a companion stated, "When I wanted to change my mind, I had to go out in the hallway"

My wife and I have spent two nights in the Meripuisto Hotel in Espoo in mid-August 2005. It was not our first choice but when we arrived in the Helsinki region we found all the other hotels we knew in Espoo completely booked so we finally phoned at Meripuisto and luckily they had rooms available. In the end, the hotel was much better than we thought it would be.
The Meripuisto Hotel is enormous and seems to specialize in conferences, business meetings etc., so there are a lot of people around during the day but the hotel is a very silent place during the night. The building seems to date from the 1970's, and rooms are furnished in that style, too, but since the house is well kept, the fact that the interior of the building is somehow dated didn't disturb us. Beds were good. Our double room cost 90 EUR per night, with a buffet-style breakfast included, which was average but okay. Staff was very helpful and - as so many Finnish people - totally fluent in English.
The hotel is located in the Espoonlahti area in the south of Espoo. Good signs are posted as soon as you have left the Helsinki-Hanko highway at "Espoonlahti" exit. The neighborhood is residential and therefore extremely quiet. The Meripuisto hotel has a lot of parking facilities underneath and around the building (these are mostly full during the day, with many people coming in for meetings and conferences but not staying at the hotel overnight, so in the evening there is always enough parking space available). As its name (meaning "garden at the sea") indicates, it is located on the coast, and there are beautiful footpaths in the forest just behind the hotel that bring you down to the shore, some 150 metres away. Wonderful views from there! (Our room, unfortunately, didn't have a great view.) Free internet access is available at the hotel's "business center", and a free swimming pool and sauna are also available but they have to be reserved in advance, and when we were in, they had already been reserved so we could not check them.
The problem of this - like at most hotels in Espoo - is that it is well connected by road but less so by public transport. We had a rental car, so it was no problem to reach downtown Helsinki in 15 to 20 minutes by highway. There is a bus stop near the hotel and another some 500 metres away from where there are direct express buses going to Helsinki, but they run at a rather irregular schedule. Otherwise, using local Espoo buses, one has to change to get to Helsinki, and the journey would probably take a long time. Thus, the hotel seems recomandable for travellers with a car only. What convinced us most was the price: although 90 EUR per night is far from being cheap, the stay was worth it, and unfortunately hotels in Helsinki are very expensive anyway.