The only ice hotel in Romania is already booked for the holidays, free places available starting January 5

The ice hotel at Balea Lake is already fully booked for the holidays, but tourists can still book rooms starting January 5, 2015, according to data available on the hotel’s website, as of December 8. Work on the hotel has already started last week and the owners estimate that it will be ready on December 20. The hotel will be officially opened for tourists on Christmas. The Hotel of Ice will have 12 rooms, which are named after the 12 signs of the zodiac, and three separate igloos. The price for a normal room per night is about EUR 100 (RON 440), and an Igloo can be booked for about EUR 150 (RON 660) per night. Breakfast is not included in the price of the room. The hotel is fully booked until January 4, as well as for some of the weekends at the end of January and even in February and March. There are even few bookings made for April. The first bookings were made by British tourism agencies. Last season, the Hotel of Ice was opened since Christmas 2013 until the beginning of April, 2014, and received about 1,000 tourists. More than 70% of these were foreigners, especially British, but also Chinese, French, Spanish, Brazilians and Hungarians. editor@romania-insider.com