There is ice at the North Pole. Much ice. And far and wide no hotel, the curious houses. If you want to spend your vacation at this end of the world, you usually book a cruise ship with the highest ice class. And then there are the scientists and adventurers who billets at the Russian research camp Barneo on Drifteis. A Finnish organizer is now planning to build a glamping camp under the northern lights.
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Glamping Camp: One night at the PoleIn April 2020, Luxury Adventures plans to build ten "heatable glass igloos in the safest locations around the Arctic glacier," says CEO Janne Honkanen. North Pole Igloos Hotel is said to have only been open for a month, as only then is the arrival possible. The concept is "agile, sustainable, but still a bit extreme," describes Honkanen his idea.
The glass tents with toilets in arctic weather conditions have already passed their test - temperatures can drop to minus 45 degrees in winter. In solitude: other guests, a camp manager, a nature guide, a cook and security staff.
Ever since Honkanen opened a five-star hotel near Rovaniemi in northern Finland, his guests would like to know more about the state of the Arctic, the CEO explains. He wanted to enable the customer a North Pole experience in a safe way.
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In deserts and under water: 14 spectacular hotels worldwideIf you stay overnight in your pop-up-pol hotel, you can be a first-hand ambassador to report on the consequences of climate change. The camp would not harm the Arctic environment, Honkanen says to CNN. "Everything we transport there, we bring back." At the end of the month, the structures would be packed together and returned to Spitsbergen. The rest of the year they serve as glamping accommodations in Lapland, Finland and Spitsbergen.
100,000 euros for one night
The project, which many media worldwide report, is very ambitious. The organizer Janni Honkanen did not answer any questions. Even the Barneo team can only set up the research camp about 50 to 100 kilometers away from the North Pole with great effort.
There are for the construction of a runway about bulldozers needed, which are cleaned after demolition of the camp and handed over to the sea. Also, the ice floes are sometimes fragile, large cracks can arise. The Barneo Camp also has the main purpose, for example, to perform experiments using ice bores.
On Friday, other international scientists set out for the North Pole: the German research vessel "Polarstern" sets off from Tromsö for the largest Arctic expedition of all time. In the pack ice north of central Siberia, it will be tied to an ice floe, frozen in winter and drifting over the Pole until next summer. On the floe will be a huge research station. Around 600 scientists from all over the world are involved, trying to better understand the effects of global warming.
What applies to any kind of Polanderung - whether the South or North Pole: even the journey is extreme. The guests of the North Pole Igloos Hotel would reach the Pole faster than the researchers on the "Polarstern". But they would have to use the plane to Spitsbergen for their short trip into the ice. According to the organizer, they are going in helicopters, they would spend two hours crossing the Arctic to a first camp and then on to the Glamping igloos. The price of the trip is also expensive: about 100,000 euros for one night at the Pole.
Most can even be reached by train - and overnight stays in the annual igloos of snow and ice are much cheaper. They are built from Sweden to Switzerland - and offer depending on the situation, a view of the starry sky over the Matterhorn or in the northern lights of Jukkasjärvi.
