This winter, the Hôtel de Glace in Quebec will be built from scratch – entirely out of ice. Around 30 ice workers will build a hotel out of 40,000 tons of snow, while 15 ice sculptures will decorate the cool rooms. It is the only hotel in North America that is made entirely of ice and snow.
Ice hotels are outdoor accommodations where guests sleep in igloos while wrapped in fur blankets. But they’re not a tough adventure – in fact, they’re getting more and more luxurious, coupled with hot tubs, fine dining, cool cocktails, and evening entertainment.
“Ice hotels are for travelers looking for an immersive way to explore remote locations, but who also don’t want to forego the convenience of a more traditional luxury travel experience,” says Mark Nowikowski, founder of the travel concierge company Flying Point. “I believe the Ice Hotel is the perfect winter addition to this increasingly popular glamping trend,” he says.
The Hôtel de Glace in Valcartier, a 20-minute drive from Québec City, takes full advantage of the cold Canadian weather. It’s not just a hotel but a winter playground near the Village Vacances Valcartier hotel.
Since opening in 2001, Quebec entrepreneur Jacques Desbois has outfitted this Quebec ice hotel with luxury amenities, which features a Nordic relaxation area with hot tubs and a sauna under the stars.
The hotel has an ice bar with winter cocktails, an ice chapel, concerts and ice sculpture workshops. Shortly before the 20th anniversary of the Hôtel de Glace this winter, they saw around 2 million visitors and around 70,000 overnight guests.
Experience 365’s SnowCastle Resort, which is open all year round.
Experience 365
European ice vacation
However, this would not have been possible without Sweden. The first ice hotel opened in 1989 in the northern Swedish region of Lapland in a town called Jukkasjärvi.
“All the ice comes from the river and it goes back like a circle,” says Luca Roncoroni, the creative director of the Icehotel in Sweden. “Knowing that you can try a new idea next year is very liberating; it has an interesting effect on creativity. “
this Ice hotel opens in mid-December with 44 warm hotel rooms, 28 warm chalets, 18 open-art ice suites open all year round and 32 artistically designed ice suites from the nearby river Torne. There are also nine deluxe suites. This year, the award-winning design duo Prince Carl Philip Bernadotte and Oscar Kylberg designed a suite. “The aim is to create a space in a unique Swedish environment that is natural to nature,” says Kylberg, CEO of Bernadotte & Kylberg.
Other luxury hotels followed in Scandinavia and Europe. Bjorli Ice Lodge in the Dovre-Sunndalsfjella National Park in the Sunndal region of Norway is made entirely of snow and ice. There are also luxury tents, snowmobile tours, and saunas for guests to use. In addition to the Bjorli ski area, it is a luxury ice hotel with stylish, well-equipped rooms that are open from January to April. There is traditional Nordic cuisine, saunas and hot tubs nearby.
However, not every nature-loving hotel is made of ice. In the Swiss Alps there is the luxurious Whitepod ecocamp, which takes a different approach. As in a five-star hotel, there are private saunas and elegant rooms that are filled with heavy ceilings as part of their “high-tech eco-camp”. Sleep in environmentally conscious geodesic capsules heated by pellet stoves in the middle of a snow-capped mountain.
In the Slovenian mountains, Eskimo Village can only be reached by cable car, followed by a snowshoe hike up the mountain. The guests sleep in sheepskin on a snow block bed in an igloo.
In Gstaad, a ski resort in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland, the Iglu-Dorg Gstaad houses multi-room igloos for overnight stays, which serve gourmet fondue when the moon is full, as well as group hikes around the grounds and igloo construction workshops that describe in detail how these are Structures were built.
Resort experience on the ice
Some of the ice hotels are full-fledged resorts, like that Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort in Northern Finland that combines luxury igloos with adventures like reindeer safaris, ice fishing and snowboarding. Among their luxury suites are theirs Queen Suite is a classic chalet made of Finnish kelo wood and features a sauna and jacuzzi, while the Traditional House is a centuries-old wooden house with a fireplace in traditional Lappish style.
Its popularity has skyrocketed over the past year as more and more travelers turn to remote locations for their wellbeing.
The luxurious whitepod eco camp in the Swiss Alps.
Whitepod
“Since the pandemic in particular, I have noticed that luxury travelers are increasingly attracted to new and real ways of finding presence and at the same time getting in contact with nature again,” says Nowikowski. “Ice hotels offer an upscale, unique way to do just that in the winter season and in places where this type of experience would otherwise not have been good.”
Another possibility is Experience 365 in Kemi, a small town in Northern Finland that has a SnowCastle Resort all year round. For those who want to marvel at the northern lights at night, their SnowHotel has been built every winter since 1996.
Among the luxurious amenities, Seaview Restaurant Lumihiutale offers an arctic twist on local seafood and a Finnish sauna with private lounges and breathtaking sea views. For a no-ice hotel, they have their Seaside Glass Villas, which are located on the Bothnian Bay, open all year round.
AnnaSofia Mååg, a Swedish artist who worked at the Icehotel in Sweden, says that making a hotel room entirely out of ice is not an easy task. But it’s a worthwhile challenge.
“Creating a suite in the Icehotel is real, unbearably hard, magical and at the same time absolutely beautiful,” says Mååg. “It’s fascinating to see how everyone gathers here during the construction period and the people who keep coming back to create another ice hotel year after year.”
