Sleeping on a bed of ice may not be the first thing that comes to mind for an incentive trip. But a visit to the Icehotel in northern Sweden will convince most any planner that ice beds and furnishings can be part of the most amazing experience your group may ever have. Located 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle, the Icehotel has been dazzling visitors since the first sculptor put carving tool to ice in 1990, with a new edition of the hotel created each November using ice harvested from the pristine waters of nearby Torne River.
“Icehotel should be on everyone’s bucket list,” says Magnus Lindbergh, marketing/sales manager for meetings and incentives at Visit Sweden. “It’s really beautiful, really breathtaking. Each time you go you experience something different. And the combination of Stockholm and Icehotel is a really fantastic group incentive trip.”
After arriving on a 90-minute flight from Stockholm, attendees are properly outfitted before hopping aboard waiting ground transportation–dogsleds–which glide through one of Europe’s last wilderness expanses. And the reaction upon reaching the property?
“Disbelief!” says Beatrice Karlsson, marketing manager for Icehotel. “It’s really a unique experience; not just the fact that it’s an igloo in a remote part of the world, but also the incredible stuff the artists manage to do with it, the feel of the snow and the special silence, and even the scent you experience inside Icehotel.”
This year’s Icehotel has 65 individualized guest rooms specially created by designers and sculptors. One suite’s theme is inspired by the Big Bang, another with a projector playing film clips, and the main hall portrays a lost garden. Besides an Icebar for receptions, Karlsson adds that meeting and event ice facilities can be custom created for groups.
Group activities range from dogsledding excursions and snowmobile safaris, to ice sculpting and ice driving with Mini Coopers. The 400-year-old village of Jukkasjarvi is not far, where indigenous Sami people can educate attendees on their culture, traditions and reindeer herding, and meeting space is available in a traditional octagonal structure. A bonus for 2014 visitors is an especially active Aurora Borealis, reaching a peak on its seven-year cycle.
Attendees can thaw out at the adjacent “warm” hotel, with many opting to spend one night on ice and another inside one of 44 modern rustic rooms, or 28 chalets. Meals are also served indoors at one of four restaurants, including The Old Homestead in a timbered building from 1768, and the Icehotel Restaurant, which features twists on traditional Lapland fare such as moose carpaccio and filet of reindeer.
