For USD 231,000, design your own hotel room made of ice

Sweden’s ICEHOTEL is enabling customers to work with designers in co-creating their own bespoke hotel rooms out of ice.

Many holidaymakers are keen to find ways they can make their trip unique, and getting to decide what goes into a hotel room is one way to do just that. While UK-based Whitbread has already used its smart tech-enabled hub spaces to lend a measure of personalization to its hotel rooms, Sweden’s ICEHOTEL is going one further, enabling customers to work with designers to create their own bespoke ice creations before they arrive.

Located in the village of Jukkasjärvi, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, the hotel is unique in that its rooms are constructed entirely of ice, meaning they can be easily melted down and transformed into a new space. The venue has now launched a new scheme which brings guests into the design stages of each suite to enable them to have a room created to their specifications. For SEK1 485 000, customers of ICEHOTEL will enjoy a face-to-face meeting with a designer wherever they are in the world, and can have as much or as little input into the creation of the hotel room as they like. They will then be able to stay in their room between December and March, receiving a bottle of the meltwater, along with sketches, blueprints and photographs of the suite, once it’s melted in the springtime.

With such a hefty price tag, the bespoke ICEHOTEL rooms are by far the most expensive in the world, although part of the proceeds will be donated to environmental initiatives in the Baltic Sea. Could brick and mortar hotels offer up a similar level of customization through new technologies such as 3D printing perhaps?