Lei Fu
Professor Luis A Romero Valenzuela
HFT 1000
October 15 2013
A Warm Story about A Cold Place
There is an IceHotel in the village of Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, it opens between December and April; it is the world's first ice hotel. The Icehotel is belong to the Swedish Lapland Tourism Cooperative Society (formerly Norrbotten / Lapland Economic Association). It was formed on 1 October 2001 and replaced the previous regional tourism organization Tourism Council of Norrbotten ("If Swedish Lapland."). It is a public company, and it is located at the office in Luleå, Swenden. Then phone number is +46 70-512 23 46. The CEO of the Swedish Lapland Tourism Cooperative Society is Annika Fredriksson ("Swedish Lapland."). Swedish Lapland Tourism is an industry-driven organization and collaboration platform that represents the hospitality industry in Norrbotten County's municipalities and Skellefteå. The Swedish Lapland is used as a destination and place brand in marketing the northernmost destination covering 25% of the country's land area ("Om Swedish). The destination's unique natural environment and local culture has a high international attractiveness and 35% of guests are foreigners ("Om Swedish). Operations are financed by membership fees, EU structural funds, all municipalities in the destinations, Norrbotten County Council and the County Administrative Board of Norrbotten.
The association's overriding objective is to increase the region (Norrbotten and Skellefteå) attractiveness and competitiveness, thereby achieving a greater influx of visitors to the region. This results in increased profitability and an increased number of employees in the companies that directly or indirectly affected by our national and international guests ("If Swedish Lapland."). The Icehotel is one of the projects that the Swedish Lapland Tourism Cooperative Society offer. “Dig Where You Stand” this has been and still is the motto of business visionary and entrepreneur Yngve Bergqvist, who is the founder of Icehotel. By that, he means that you should look at the potential and opportunities that your surrounding area offers. Initially, the long and cold winters made Bergqvist look around for new ideas to use what was at hand in Jukkasjärvi – ice, and plenty of it. Bergqvist was inspired by the Japanese ice sculpting tradition and with the help of two professional ice sculptors from Japan as instructors; he invited artists to attend a workshop in Jukkasjärvi in 1989. This marked the start of a nearly 25 year long journey with the Torne River. Inspired by the workshop, the following winter saw the first ever ice structure - an especially designed igloo built using mold technique was constructed on the frozen Torne River. The 60 m² igloo was intended to as an art gallery and was named ARTic Hall. The following winters, ARTic Hall attracted considerable attention. It was used not only to display art, but also for church services and film show cases. Bergqvist and his associates also opened a bar inside the hall, and even tried sleeping in subzero temperatures. The igloo had grown to measure 250 m² in size; the building technique was re!ned and patented in Sweden and Norway. The first party of overnight guests to stay at Icehotel was a specialist survival group of the Swedish Armed Forces. International space satellite company Versatel was the first conference group to sleep in -5° C (23° F) on a bed of soft reindeer skins. The next morning, they woke up thrilled and exhilarated by the experience and ICEHOTEL was born. Nowadays, some 30,000 guests have the very same experience every winter when they stay in the original Icehotel. (“ICEHOTEL. Advertisement. ”)
This is the story of how Icehotel began. The entire hotel is made out of snow and ice blocks taken from the Torne River; even the glasses in the bar are made of ice. Each spring, around March, Icehotel harvests tons of ice from the frozen Torne River and stores it in a nearby production hall with room for
