Building an ice hotel with locals in Norway

Building an ice hotel with locals

As in many cases we were again in a pitch with Finland regarding a group of 140 people from one company in Germany. We cannot compete with the number of snow scooter or dog sledges so we really had to think different. The time was between Christmas and the New Year in 2007-2008.

Concept idea

In Alta (Norway Lapland) will every year be built up a huge ice hotel by the locals based on old techniques. We called out the owners and asked them what they think if we could come with 140 people to assist building up the ice hotel.

They thought that was a crazy idea and would only delay their work. It took us some time to convince them that it could be on one side a great idea, which nobody ever did, and on the other side they would get help AND get paid.

At the end we convinced them and offered the idea. After a short time, we got the answer back that we won.

Actual project

Now the work started and Karina had to fly up several times to create the right logistics for those 3 days. The idea was NOT to make a rotation system, as it is usually done, BUT to let the guests decide what they would LIKE to do. We asked for a person to be interested to be the team leader who then is responsible if the guests wish to change to another activity. We had a long list of things which should be done and how many people in each team.

Half the group was enjoying a tour on snow scooters while the other half built the entire day.

NOBODY switched activity and everybody worked really hard and had the biggest fun, learnt how an ice hotel is built (and who knows that ??). At the end the locals said to their guests that they achieved much more with them than they would have by themselves and I reminded them afterwards that in addition they also earned good money with it. This win-win-win!!