QUEBEC North America's coolest tourist destination, Quebec's ice hotel, opened this week for its second season, but the red-hot success of its first year might be more difficult to repeat after the Sept. 11 attacks and the resulting downturn in air travel, the Reuters reported.

The ice hotel near historic Quebec City, Canada's oldest city, opened to wide publicity on Tuesday night and attracted several hundred guests to the football field-long establishment.

Mmade from 11,000 tons of snow and 350 tons of ice, the hotel can accommodate 76 people in 31 rooms and suites. Located in a rural area near the provincial capital, the structure is rebuilt each year between January and late March.

Last year, the C$1 million ($650,000) hotel drew some 45,000 visitors, but it is expected to face difficulty this year attracting foreign tourists wary of flying since the attacks on the United States.

It also has to battle the worldwide economic slowdown and a Canadian winter that has been exceptionally mild. Snow only started to fall on the Quebec City region on Christmas Eve.

"We are planning to have a 60 percent occupancy rate this year," owner Francis Leonard told Reuters at the opening.

Leonard said that his team was working around the clock to

make sure that the months of February and March would mean good business.

"We are offering people a unique experience: Winter in Canada," he said, stressing that more than 90 percent of the hotel's clients are foreign, mainly from the United States, Europe and Japan.

"Some Japanese groups have, however, canceled because of the Sept. 11 attacks," Leonard said.

The hotel's facilities include executive suites, a bar, a chapel, an outdoor spa, a cinema and two art galleries featuring ice sculptures.

Located at a resort outside Quebec City, the hotel gives clients access to winter sports such as cross-country skiing, ice skating, dog sledding, ice fishing -- and golf, at a nearby driving range.

The cost, C$160 ($100) per person a night, includes a hot breakfast and a sleeping bag, which lies on top a fur-covered ice bed.

Some travel writers have slammed the price, saying it is too much to pay for a night in a cold room.

Tourists said they were impressed by the site but said it did not convince them to stay overnight on an ice bed.

"I love it here. It is beautiful and a great experience... but it is definitely too cold and I would not spend a night," said Lilia Salgado Medina, a 32-year-old tourist from Mexico

City.

The ice hotel concept was imported from Sweden, where what was billed as the world's first ice hotel was constructed about a decade ago in Jukkasjarvi, 200km (125 miles) north of the Arctic circle.

The flood of visitors to Sweden's ice hotel has actually reversed an exodus of locals who had been moving south in search of a friendlier climate.