Bedroom, IceHotel 365© Christopher Hauser/www.icehotel.com

Longing for a white Christmas? Then you’d better head for Swedish Lapland, where not only is a white Christmas guaranteed, so is a white 2017. IceHotel 365, Swedish Lapland© PinPin Studio/www.icehotel.com

You’ve probably heard of the Jukkasjärvi IceHotel. Made from 5,000 tons of ice, it was Europe’s original ice hotel, first built back in 1989. The flaw in the concept, of course, is that every spring it simply melts back into the river from which it came: fine if you want to stay in December; not so great if you can’t get away until April. Well, no longer, because this month they’ve added a new section called IceHotel 365, above, and as its name suggests, it will be open year-round.Bar, IceHotel 365© Asaf Kliger/www.icehotel.com

The interiors of the new hotel reflect the design aesthetics of its neighbour and like the IceHotel feature a mixture of warm and cold rooms, plus an ice bar and an ice gallery. Cold room temperatures are maintained at a chilly -5C (23F) and to achieve this, steel pipes have been drilled into the permafrost 5m below the ground. Inner walls have been made from ice blocks while exterior walls made of concrete and covered with ‘snice’ (the technical term for a mixture of snow and ice). As Yngve Bergqvist, founder of IceHotel points out, the building is so well insulated it’s like a Thermos flask.IceHotel 365, Swedish Lapland© Asaf Kliger/www.icehotel.com

Maintaining accommodation made of ice, not to mention the warm rooms, restaurant and offices, clearly takes a lot of energy and at IceHotel 365 this will be supplied by solar panels: Jukkasjärvi is 200 km inside Arctic Circle where there is almost constant daylight during the summer months. And they won’t be trying to keep the exterior snowy in warmer weather. Once the ice has melted, Arctic flowers and grasses will bloom in the hotel’s green turf roof.Ice drinks, IceHotel 365©Martin Smedsén/www.icehotel.com

So, actually, there’s no hurry to get there for Christmas. How about a White Summer Solstice next year? Simply Sweden has a four-night Magical Moments in Lapland  trip which includes a stay at IceHotel 365, from £1,695 per person. Or try Discover the World, which has three-night breaks from £1,043. 

BY MAGGIE O’SULLIVAN