Making use of the extra space every year since 1989, the hotel is carefully built using the frozen water from the river, with new designs each time. Typically, it spans across 18,000 square feet and uses around 1,000 tonnes of material from the Torne River. A combination of snow and ice, also known as "snice", is taken from the river and combined with a precise amount of water and air to protect the hotel from melting.