High in the Alps, Igloo Hotels Offer the Epitome of No-Frills Luxury
As long as you consider “experience as the new luxury,” that is.
The Gstaad Igloo Village.
Source: Iglu-Dorf
It sounds like a tough sell: a hotel room with no windows, no heat, and no bathroom, all for the price of five-star accommodations. And yet, thousands of people a year jump at the chance, paying upward of $500 a night to stay in igloo hotels carved from piles of snow and ice atop ski areas across the Alps.
Over New Year’s, I stumbled onto the igloo hotel near Gstaad in Switzerland, where it sits at 1,950 meters (6,400 feet), just below the summit station of the Saanersloch gondola. There’s an outdoor bar with views across the surrounding peaks for skiers passing by, and inside there’s a restaurant where the ice casts a soothing blue glow, and the wooden tables are set into booths carved from the snow.