Ice Hotels

Rebuilt every winter beside a glacial lake at around two thousand metres in the Carpathians, this is the only ice hotel of its kind in Eastern Europe, and the approach is half the experience: the road is closed by snow, so guests arrive by cable car and then walk the last stretch across the ice.

The structure is cut from blocks taken from the lake itself, with a vaulted central room used as a bar and restaurant and sleeping chambers off it. Beds are ice platforms layered with insulation and heavy sleeping bags; a heated building nearby holds the bathrooms and a place to warm up, which is standard practice for the format.

It is a one-night proposition for most people, and that is the right way to treat it. The setting — a high, treeless bowl that clouds over and clears within minutes — is what stays with you.

A seasonal igloo village built each winter above Brixen im Thale in the Kitzbühel Alps, reached by gondola from the valley floor. Unlike the Nordic ice hotels, which lean on the Arctic and the aurora, this one is embedded in a working ski area: you can ski to the door, and the surrounding pistes stay open around it.

The village is a cluster of domed snow structures rather than a single building, with carved sleeping igloos, a bar and a restaurant among them. Ice carving is taken seriously here — the interiors are sculpted rather than merely hollowed — and the site is open to day visitors as well as overnight guests, so it has more life to it than a hotel of this size usually manages.

An overnight includes the practical scaffolding: expedition sleeping equipment, a hot drink before bed, breakfast in a heated building in the morning.

Chena Hot Springs is a year-round resort about an hour east of Fairbanks, and its ice structure is unusual in the category for standing all year rather than melting each spring: it is kept frozen by a refrigeration system running on the resort's own geothermal power, which is a genuinely odd and rather elegant piece of engineering.

The building holds carved rooms, ice sculpture by championship carvers, and a bar where drinks are served in glasses cut from ice. Guests sleep in the resort's conventional lodge rooms and cabins, then visit the ice building — a division that suits travellers who want the spectacle without the sleeping bag.

The rest of the resort is the reason people stay for more than a night: outdoor hot springs at the base of a hillside, and some of the more reliable aurora viewing in interior Alaska between autumn and early spring.

Built into the snowpack on the Alpspitze above Nesselwang, in the Allgäu, this is a small igloo hotel with a specific advantage: it is easy to reach from Munich, so the whole idea can be attempted over a weekend rather than an expedition.

Sleeping chambers are dug and domed by hand, with the usual arrangement of insulated mats, expedition-grade sleeping bags and a heated service building for washing. Evenings run to a fondue in the ice bar and, on clear nights, a walk out onto the ridge, where the Alpine foothills drop away towards the Bavarian plain.

Small enough that the whole place effectively becomes one group for the night, which is either the appeal or the objection, depending on the guest.