Protected: In-depth info for board & investors

A strategic and philosophical essay on why less is, in every sense, more.

What Is a Landscape Hotel?
The term “landscape hotel” has been circulating in architectural and hospitality circles for over a decade, but it describes something timeless: a place where the building does not dominate the land — the land dominates the building.

A landscape hotel, as defined by the genre, is a type of accommodation designed to blend seamlessly into its surrounding environment, using sustainable materials and sensitive site planning to minimise ecological footprint. Unlike conventional hotels that alter or impose themselves upon a location, landscape hotels work with nature — preserving and amplifying the land’s natural character while enhancing the guest experience through immersion rather than distraction. ²

The genre arguably began in earnest with Juvet Landscape Hotel in Norway’s Valldal valley — famously used as the setting for the 2015 film Ex Machina — where glass-walled cabins are positioned in the forest to frame views of fjords and wilderness while maintaining minimal disturbance to the surroundings. ²
More recently, Piaule in New York’s Catskill Mountains brought the concept to North America: 24 prefabricated cabins on 50 wooded acres, each with floor-to-ceiling glass and almost nothing inside to compete with the view — and rates of $399 a night to match the philosophy. ⁵

The principles are consistent across the best examples:

²

Hugarró and Hvalfjörður: a perfect union of concept and place
Not every beautiful site is right for a landscape hotel. But Hugarró’s site at Litla-Botnsland in Hvalfjörður — Iceland’s dramatic Whale Fjord, roughly 55 minutes north of Reykjavik — is as well-suited to this concept as any location in Europe.

Hvalfjörður is 30 kilometres long, up to 5 kilometres wide and reaches 84 metres at its deepest. It is flanked by volcanic mountains, dense with seasonal greenery, and home to Glymur, Iceland’s second-highest waterfall. ⁷
It is, in the words of multiple travel writers, one of Iceland’s hidden gems — a word that matters enormously in today’s experience-driven travel economy. ⁹

Hugarró’s design philosophy is built directly around this landscape. Rather than imposing a resort on the land, the team has allowed the natural slope, existing tree cover, fjord views and site character to guide every design decision. Buildings are planned to be low-impact, carefully positioned and visually integrated into the hillside. Where possible, topography and vegetation will provide privacy, shelter and calm — without relying on heavy structures. 

This approach is not merely aesthetic — it is ideological. Hugarró explicitly references the European Landscape Convention, which recognises landscape as more than scenery: it is part of local identity, ecological quality and human well-being. At Hugarró, the built environment is designed to remain secondary to the land itself. 

The practical choices reinforce this:

• Only ~4% of the site will be built upon, leaving the vast majority of the land untouched and protected.  31 guest cabins will be spaced 25–80 metres apart, each privately sited within the landscape, with the ability to electrically rotate toward the guest’s preferred view.
• The hotel building itself consists of 48 prefabricated modules manufactured in Europe, drastically reducing on-site construction activity, noise, soil disturbance and traffic during the build phase.
• Outdoor lighting will follow strict dark-sky principles — shielded, downward-directed, warm-temperature fixtures — to preserve the night landscape for both guests and wildlife.  A closed-loop geothermal system will power the seven hot spring pools, with 90%+ water reuse and heat recovery feeding building heating, hot water and road de-icing.

The ambition, stated plainly on the project’s own pages, is not simply to build a resort: “It is to create a first-class hospitality destination that protects and restores nature, contributes to the local economy and helps guests develop a deeper connection with Iceland’s extraordinary landscape.” 

The market: why the world is ready for this
The timing for a project like Hugarró could not be more favourable. Several powerful market trends are converging precisely in the segment it targets.

1. Wellness Tourism Is Booming

The global wellness tourism market was valued at approximately $1.03 trillion in 2025 and is projected to reach $2.19 trillion by 2035, growing at a CAGR of roughly 7.8%. ¹⁰
This is no longer a niche. Wellness travel has expanded well beyond high-net-worth consumers and into aspirational middle-class travellers across multiple price points. ¹¹

2. Eco-luxury is the direction of luxury travel

The global luxury hotel market was valued at $170.77 billion in 2025 and is forecast to grow to $416.5 billion by 2034. ¹²
</kcite> Within that market, 53% of guests now prefer eco-luxury hotels and 61% are influenced primarily by immersive, experiential stays. ¹³
</kcite> These are not marginal preferences — they are the defining characteristics of the dominant luxury traveller cohort.

3. Iceland draws high-value visitors in sustained numbers

Iceland welcomed 2.3 million international visitors in 2025, with foreign hotel overnight stays increasing 8.9% year-on-year. ⁶
</kcite> Average hotel occupancy across the country reached 67.2% for the year. ⁶
The top source markets — the USA (31.4%), the UK (12.3%) and Germany (8.4%) ⁶  — are precisely those countries with the highest concentration of eco-conscious, experience-seeking luxury travellers with both the means and the motivation to seek out a destination like Hugarró.

4. Proximity to Reykjavik without the Reykjavik crowd

Hvalfjörður sits less than an hour’s drive from the capital. This proximity unlocks a significant secondary market — high-value urban escapists seeking a genuine nature immersion without a long-haul flight or multi-day journey. This is increasingly how premium short-break travel works: guests fly into a capital, and detour for a night or two to something truly different. Hugarró is positioned perfectly for that pattern.

Community benefits: tourism that gives more than it takes
One of the most persistent criticisms of luxury resort development in sensitive natural areas is that it extracts value from a place while leaving the surrounding community largely unchanged — or worse, displaced. Landscape hotel design, done properly, inverts this dynamic.

Economic benefits
Rural tourism stimulates cooperation and partnership between local communities, improving employment opportunities, local income, entrepreneurial opportunity and local tax revenue. ⁴
Hugarró directly creates employment in accommodation, guiding, food production and a range of ancillary services. 

Infrastructure investment
The project will improve local infrastructure beyond the hotel itself: guaranteed geothermal hot water access for the surrounding community and improved high-speed internet connectivity for local residents and businesses. 
In a remote fjord community, these are genuinely meaningful contributions.

Safety and accessibility
With Glymur waterfall attracting increasing numbers of hikers to a remote and sometimes hazardous trail, the permanent staffing presence at Hugarró provides an additional layer of emergency response capacity that simply does not exist in the area today. ¹
</kcite>

Cultural revitalisation
The opening of the Hvalfjörður Tunnel in 1998 effectively bypassed the fjord, causing a slow erosion of the small roadside communities that once served travellers making the longer coastal journey. Hugarró’s arrival at Litla-Botnsland will restore a genuine service hub to a location that historically anchored community life in the area — not as a nostalgic recreation, but as a modern, upgraded version of what once existed. 

Conservation as community value
Beyond economics, rural tourism has been shown to generate environmental benefits: improved natural conservation, biodiversity protection, enhanced environmental awareness and infrastructure improvements that serve both residents and wildlife. ⁴
Hugarró’s commitment to restoring birch forest cover to 100% of its current extent — and the use of conservation funding generated by entrance fees, permits and concession arrangements — means the surrounding landscape will leave this project better than it found it. ³

The financial case: cost-benefit analysis

Cost advantages of the landscape hotel model

The landscape hotel model, particularly when combined with modular construction, carries structural cost advantages over conventional hotel development:

¹⁴

Modular construction also delivers predictable pricing and consistent quality control — critical advantages in Iceland’s environment, where on-site labour shortages and challenging weather conditions can cause severe cost overruns in traditional builds.

Revenue advantages
Landscape hotels occupy a premium pricing tier that conventional hotels in the same geography cannot access. The experiential rarity of the product — rotating cabins in an Icelandic fjord, geothermal pools fed by the earth itself, no light pollution, direct access to a waterfall hike — commands average daily rates (ADRs) that are structurally higher than comparably rated conventional product. This ADR premium, combined with the lean operating model, creates attractive unit economics.

Hugarró’s financial projections target 52% occupancy in Year 1, with individual cabins and hotel rooms sold to investors under a leaseback model generating estimated annual returns of 7–11%. ³

Sustainability as a commercial advantage

Sustainability certifications — BREEAM, Nordic Swan, GreenKey, EarthCheck — have moved from reputational bonuses to booking-decision factors. With 49% of luxury hotel guests now actively seeking eco-certified properties when booking, ⁸  these certifications are a direct driver of occupancy, not merely a marketing badge.

Furthermore, Hugarró’s geothermal energy system and ultra-efficient water filtration (90%+ water reuse, no chemical treatment) translate directly into lower operating costs — a competitive moat that conventional hotels simply cannot replicate without starting over from the ground up.

Conclusion: architecture in service of something larger

Landscape hotel design is not a trend. It is a correction — a return to the idea that great hospitality should enhance a place rather than consume it. The best landscape hotels feel inevitable: you cannot imagine the site without them, and yet you can barely see them when you arrive.

Hvalfjörður has waited quietly for the right project. A fjord of this beauty, this proximity to a major international hub, and this richness of natural and cultural heritage deserves something more thoughtful than a standard hotel block. Hugarró’s landscape-led design — with its dispersed cabins, rotating views, geothermal soul and commitment to restoring the land — is precisely the right answer to what this extraordinary place is asking for.

The market is ready. The site is ready. And the model works.

Hugarró Nature Retreat is in development at Litla-Botnsland, Hvalfjörður, Iceland. The project is designed by Studio SKA and targets opening in early  2028.

Modular prefabricated construction is not simply a preference for Hugarró — it is the only construction approach that realistically reconciles the constraints we face: a chronic shortage of qualified local labour, volatile Icelandic weather, strict nature conservation rules that limit our on-site construction window, and the imperative to deliver a high-quality hospitality product on time and within budget. Every element of our build strategy has been designed around these realities.

The Icelandic imperative: why prefab is not optional
Building in a remote Icelandic location presents a set of compounding challenges that traditional in-situ construction simply cannot absorb:

• Labour scarcity and cost. Qualified construction tradespeople are in chronic short supply across Iceland. Where they exist, they are expensive and often not reliably available for remote sites. Foreign workers already account for roughly a quarter of Iceland’s entire workforce, reflecting how deep this structural gap runs.
• Weather exposure. Iceland’s wind, rain, frost, and rapidly shifting conditions make conventional on-site construction slow, unpredictable, and costly. Delays compound.
• Remote location. Mobilising and maintaining a large, multi-trade workforce on a remote site over many months is logistically complex and expensive.

Our strategy was therefore to out-design the dependency on local labour to an absolute minimum and to transfer as much of the construction process as possible to a controlled factory environment, where weather is irrelevant and quality is consistent.

There are no Icelandic companies that can deliver the combination of cost-effectiveness, precision, and relevant experience that we find in leading Central and Eastern European manufacturers. Most comparable projects currently operating in Iceland also use prefab units sourced from continental Europe — with varying degrees of success. We have been deliberate and thorough in our supplier selection.

The Birding Season: Our Construction Window Is Fixed
Iceland’s nature conservation legislation imposes strict seasonal access restrictions on ecologically sensitive sites — including the area around Hugarró. Nesting bird protection periods effectively close the site to significant construction activity from approximately May through August. This is a hard regulatory constraint, not a planning preference.

This means our window for on-site module placement activities runs roughly from September through April — Iceland’s most demanding months in terms of weather. The implications are significant:

• There is no flexibility to slide the programme into summer if something runs late
• A missed placement window means a minimum one-year delay to project opening
• Every unnecessary day of on-site activity is a day of unnecessary exposure to cost and risk

Modular prefab directly resolves this constraint. Module fabrication proceeds in the factory regardless of season, while site preparation and foundations are completed in Iceland in parallel. When the placement window opens, the modules are ready. The actual on-site placement operation is compressed into weeks, not months — well within the available window.

Factory & site: two workstreams running in parallel
One of the most powerful and often underappreciated advantages of modular construction is that factory fabrication and on-site civil works run simultaneously. While DMD Modular is manufacturing and fitting out the building modules in their Polish factory — including all interior fit-out, utilities installation, and quality testing — our team in Iceland is completing groundworks, foundations, and infrastructure. Neither stream waits for the other.

By the time the modules arrive on site, the ground is ready to receive them. This parallel working eliminates the sequential delays of traditional construction, where each phase must wait for the previous one to complete.

Our manufacturing partner: DMD Modular
Our modules are to be manufactured by DMD Modular, a leading Polish volumetric modular building company operating across Europe since 2016. Their portfolio includes hospitality, hotel, resort, residential, healthcare, and student accommodation projects in the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, and Iceland — making them one of the few manufacturers with direct Icelandic market experience and they came highly recommended by local hoteliers.

Relevant completed projects include a Hampton by Hilton (Bristol), a resort hotel extension (Belgium), Iceland’s Panorama Glass Lodge and multiple large-scale student accommodation schemes in Edinburgh and Copenhagen. DMD Modular operates under ISO-certified quality assurance processes and full compliance with European construction standards — including country-specific fire, acoustic, and structural requirements.

Factory-controlled production delivers measurably lower defect rates, superior thermal performance, and more predictable long-term operating costs compared to in-situ construction — all directly relevant to a 4-star nature retreat where post-opening remediation would be both costly and reputationally damaging.

Critically for our programme, DMD Modular will supply their own specialist installation crews to assist with on-site module placement. This eliminates our dependency on Iceland’s scarce and expensive local construction labour market for the most skilled and time-sensitive phase of the project.

The Logistics Chain
Our hotel consists of 48 modules in total. The cabin units are each made up of two halves. All modules will be transported by a specially chartered vessels sailing from a Polish seaport — a significantly more cost-effective and flexible option than standard ro-ro scheduled shipping services, and one that gives us full control over timing relative to our placement window.

Primary route — Port of Grundartangi:
The vessel docks at Grundartangi, approximately 30 minutes from site over ring-road quality infrastructure. Crucially, this stretch of the ring road is exceptionally quiet — carrying a maximum of approximately 30 vehicles per hour — meaning wide-load module convoys can move without traffic conflict, without night-time-only restrictions, and without the logistical complications that plague similar operations in more congested corridors through Reykjavik. Our team’s experience in maritime logistics is a further practical asset in coordinating this chain.

Alternative route — Nearby whaling station dock:
We are also considering to approach the owner of a whaling station with dock facilities located less than 10 minutes from the Hugarró site. If draft depth clearance is confirmed through a hydrographic survey, this option would reduce the road transport leg to a minimum and deliver meaningful additional cost and time savings. This remains an upside scenario under active development.

Crane strategy & module placement
The on-site placement of 48 modules has been planned around a tightly optimised mobile crane strategy designed to minimise crane repositioning — the single most expensive variable in the placement phase.

• Two crane positions cover the full placement of all 48 hotel modules.
• Each position allows the placement of an average of 2 cabins without repositioning
• Crane repositioning between the two positions is a single, planned move

This approach compresses what could otherwise be a lengthy, expensive, and ground-disturbing operation into a lean, efficient sequence — minimising both cost and the physical footprint of heavy machinery on ecologically sensitive terrain.

Time savings at a glance
The combined effect of parallel workstreams, factory fabrication, and optimised on-site placement is a dramatic compression of the overall project schedule compared to any traditional in-situ approach.

The practical summary: what would require 18 months or more of continuous on-site activity under a traditional build is reduced to a focused four-week placement operation, supported by months of factory production running in parallel and entirely outside Iceland’s weather and conservation constraints.

A practical guide to a meaningful upgrade

Why are you adding junior suites at all?
The answer lies in where luxury travel is heading. Across the high-end hospitality segment, the expectation has shifted: guests are no longer simply looking for a beautiful room — they want a genuine sense of space, a place to properly settle in rather than perch on the edge of a bed, and the feeling that their accommodation was designed with them specifically in mind. Junior suites have become a baseline expectation at properties positioning themselves in the upper tier of the market.

We looked carefully at what comparable Icelandic luxury properties offer and at broader trends in boutique hotel design, and the conclusion was clear: building junior suites into Hugarro from day one — rather than retrofitting them later — is simply the smarter way to open. Comparable properties like Hotel Rangá charge around €989 per night for a junior suite in high season; Blue Lagoon’s Retreat sits between €1,636 and €2,489 depending on view and season. There is clear, proven demand at that price point — and Hugarro is positioned to offer something genuinely competitive.

Why four suites — is that not too many for a 32-room hotel?
It’s the right number, and we thought carefully about it. Four suites represent just over 12% of our total inventory — enough to be a meaningful premium tier, not so many that scarcity disappears.

We’re placing two suites at each of two separate locations within the property. This allows us to:

• Create two distinct suite pairings with slightly different character and view angles, giving returning guests a reason to experience the other
• Spread the footprint across the property, so suite guests aren’t concentrated in one area
• Build in redundancy — if one pair is fully booked, the other may still be available

How do you create 39 m² suites — what’s the trade-off?
It’s a deliberate and transparent decision. Every three standard modules of 26 m² are reconfigured into two junior suites of 39 m². The middle module is divided equally between the two flanking rooms, giving each suite an additional 13 m² — enough space for a proper sitting area, a larger bathroom arrangement, and genuine breathing room.

The honest trade-off: four junior suites replace six standard rooms, meaning the overall room count reduces from 32 to 28 (net: two standard rooms fewer, across two locations of conversion). We consider this the right exchange — fewer rooms, but a meaningfully better product mix, stronger average revenue per room, and a clearer tiered offering for guests.

A 39 m² suite is comfortably within international junior suite norms, and the additional space transforms the in-room experience without requiring a different building type.

What will the junior suites actually look like?
The design details will be revealed closer to opening, but the guiding principle is that every square metre should be purposeful. Expect:

• A clearly defined sitting area — not a corner with a single armchair, but a proper space to decompress
• Enhanced bathroom — more generous layout, upgraded finishes, longer soak time
• Premium bedding and in-room features consistent with the upgrade price
• The same iconic Hvalfjörður fjord views that make Hugarro what it is — because the luxury here has always been outside the window, not in the square footage

What the junior suites will not be: a connecting door between two standard rooms dressed up as something it isn’t. That approach is a shortcut we ruled out. Guests at this level are discerning — they research, they read reviews, and they know the difference. The suites are designed as suites from day one.

How quickly can the suites be added — is there major construction involved?
None whatsoever. This is one of Hugarro’s genuine structural advantages: the hotel is built in a fully prefabricated, modular system. The junior suite modules are simply designed and specified differently from the outset — or slotted into the build sequence as a distinct module type. There is no retrofitting, no disruption to existing structures, and no phased construction headache. It’s the same process as adding any other room, just with a different configuration. The modular approach makes this kind of product differentiation not just possible, but straightforward.

How are the junior suites different from the freestanding rotating cabins?
They serve a fundamentally different guest. The junior suites sit within the main building — you have full access to the restaurant, lounge, and shared facilities while enjoying meaningfully more space and a more generous in-room experience. They’re the natural next step for guests who want a more expansive stay within the hotel itself.

The freestanding rotating cabins are a category of their own. At 55 m² / 590 sq ft, they offer:

• Complete physical separation from the main building — your own retreat, not an upgrade within one
• The rotating feature: the cabin turns to follow the sun, the aurora, or simply whichever view calls to you — a genuinely rare architectural experience found almost nowhere else in the world
• Maximum privacy: no shared corridors, no neighbours on the other side of a wall
• More space — 55 m² versus 39 m² is a meaningful difference when you’re settling in for several nights

The cabin is not just a bigger suite. It is a different kind of stay entirely.

What does each room type cost?

A few notes on how we arrived at these figures:

• The junior suite sits at roughly 1.5x the standard room rate — in line with what comparable Icelandic properties charge (Hotel Rangá’s junior suites start at approximately €989 per night in high season)
• The rotating cabin is priced at approximately 2.5–3x the standard room. This is not simply about size — it reflects uniqueness, total privacy, and an architectural concept that has no direct comparator in Iceland. Blue Lagoon’s top suites exceed €2,400 per night; our cabin rate is competitive without being aggressive
• All rates are room-only. Breakfast packages are available separately, giving guests flexibility while helping the kitchen plan
• A minimum 2-night stay applies to both junior suites and rotating cabins — this reflects the kind of stay these rooms are designed for, and ensures guests have enough time to genuinely experience them

Will you always be able to book a junior suite?
No — and that’s intentional. With only four suites in the property, availability is limited, particularly across the summer months and aurora season. We  wouild recommend our guests booking well in advance. 

A strategic and philosophical essay on why less is, in every sense, more.

What Is a Landscape Hotel?
The term “landscape hotel” has been circulating in architectural and hospitality circles for over a decade, but it describes something timeless: a place where the building does not dominate the land — the land dominates the building.

A landscape hotel, as defined by the genre, is a type of accommodation designed to blend seamlessly into its surrounding environment, using sustainable materials and sensitive site planning to minimise ecological footprint. Unlike conventional hotels that alter or impose themselves upon a location, landscape hotels work with nature — preserving and amplifying the land’s natural character while enhancing the guest experience through immersion rather than distraction. ²

The genre arguably began in earnest with Juvet Landscape Hotel in Norway’s Valldal valley — famously used as the setting for the 2015 film Ex Machina — where glass-walled cabins are positioned in the forest to frame views of fjords and wilderness while maintaining minimal disturbance to the surroundings. ²
More recently, Piaule in New York’s Catskill Mountains brought the concept to North America: 24 prefabricated cabins on 50 wooded acres, each with floor-to-ceiling glass and almost nothing inside to compete with the view — and rates of $399 a night to match the philosophy. ⁵

The principles are consistent across the best examples:

²

Hugarró and Hvalfjörður: a perfect union of concept and place
Not every beautiful site is right for a landscape hotel. But Hugarró’s site at Litla-Botnsland in Hvalfjörður — Iceland’s dramatic Whale Fjord, roughly 55 minutes north of Reykjavik — is as well-suited to this concept as any location in Europe.

Hvalfjörður is 30 kilometres long, up to 5 kilometres wide and reaches 84 metres at its deepest. It is flanked by volcanic mountains, dense with seasonal greenery, and home to Glymur, Iceland’s second-highest waterfall. ⁷
It is, in the words of multiple travel writers, one of Iceland’s hidden gems — a word that matters enormously in today’s experience-driven travel economy. ⁹

Hugarró’s design philosophy is built directly around this landscape. Rather than imposing a resort on the land, the team has allowed the natural slope, existing tree cover, fjord views and site character to guide every design decision. Buildings are planned to be low-impact, carefully positioned and visually integrated into the hillside. Where possible, topography and vegetation will provide privacy, shelter and calm — without relying on heavy structures. 

This approach is not merely aesthetic — it is ideological. Hugarró explicitly references the European Landscape Convention, which recognises landscape as more than scenery: it is part of local identity, ecological quality and human well-being. At Hugarró, the built environment is designed to remain secondary to the land itself. 

The practical choices reinforce this:

• Only ~4% of the site will be built upon, leaving the vast majority of the land untouched and protected.  31 guest cabins will be spaced 25–80 metres apart, each privately sited within the landscape, with the ability to electrically rotate toward the guest’s preferred view.
• The hotel building itself consists of 48 prefabricated modules manufactured in Europe, drastically reducing on-site construction activity, noise, soil disturbance and traffic during the build phase.
• Outdoor lighting will follow strict dark-sky principles — shielded, downward-directed, warm-temperature fixtures — to preserve the night landscape for both guests and wildlife.  A closed-loop geothermal system will power the seven hot spring pools, with 90%+ water reuse and heat recovery feeding building heating, hot water and road de-icing.

The ambition, stated plainly on the project’s own pages, is not simply to build a resort: “It is to create a first-class hospitality destination that protects and restores nature, contributes to the local economy and helps guests develop a deeper connection with Iceland’s extraordinary landscape.” 

The market: why the world is ready for this
The timing for a project like Hugarró could not be more favourable. Several powerful market trends are converging precisely in the segment it targets.

1. Wellness Tourism Is Booming

The global wellness tourism market was valued at approximately $1.03 trillion in 2025 and is projected to reach $2.19 trillion by 2035, growing at a CAGR of roughly 7.8%. ¹⁰
This is no longer a niche. Wellness travel has expanded well beyond high-net-worth consumers and into aspirational middle-class travellers across multiple price points. ¹¹

2. Eco-luxury is the direction of luxury travel

The global luxury hotel market was valued at $170.77 billion in 2025 and is forecast to grow to $416.5 billion by 2034. ¹²
</kcite> Within that market, 53% of guests now prefer eco-luxury hotels and 61% are influenced primarily by immersive, experiential stays. ¹³
</kcite> These are not marginal preferences — they are the defining characteristics of the dominant luxury traveller cohort.

3. Iceland draws high-value visitors in sustained numbers

Iceland welcomed 2.3 million international visitors in 2025, with foreign hotel overnight stays increasing 8.9% year-on-year. ⁶
</kcite> Average hotel occupancy across the country reached 67.2% for the year. ⁶
The top source markets — the USA (31.4%), the UK (12.3%) and Germany (8.4%) ⁶  — are precisely those countries with the highest concentration of eco-conscious, experience-seeking luxury travellers with both the means and the motivation to seek out a destination like Hugarró.

4. Proximity to Reykjavik without the Reykjavik crowd

Hvalfjörður sits less than an hour’s drive from the capital. This proximity unlocks a significant secondary market — high-value urban escapists seeking a genuine nature immersion without a long-haul flight or multi-day journey. This is increasingly how premium short-break travel works: guests fly into a capital, and detour for a night or two to something truly different. Hugarró is positioned perfectly for that pattern.

Community benefits: tourism that gives more than it takes
One of the most persistent criticisms of luxury resort development in sensitive natural areas is that it extracts value from a place while leaving the surrounding community largely unchanged — or worse, displaced. Landscape hotel design, done properly, inverts this dynamic.

Economic benefits
Rural tourism stimulates cooperation and partnership between local communities, improving employment opportunities, local income, entrepreneurial opportunity and local tax revenue. ⁴
Hugarró directly creates employment in accommodation, guiding, food production and a range of ancillary services. 

Infrastructure investment
The project will improve local infrastructure beyond the hotel itself: guaranteed geothermal hot water access for the surrounding community and improved high-speed internet connectivity for local residents and businesses. 
In a remote fjord community, these are genuinely meaningful contributions.

Safety and accessibility
With Glymur waterfall attracting increasing numbers of hikers to a remote and sometimes hazardous trail, the permanent staffing presence at Hugarró provides an additional layer of emergency response capacity that simply does not exist in the area today. ¹
</kcite>

Cultural revitalisation
The opening of the Hvalfjörður Tunnel in 1998 effectively bypassed the fjord, causing a slow erosion of the small roadside communities that once served travellers making the longer coastal journey. Hugarró’s arrival at Litla-Botnsland will restore a genuine service hub to a location that historically anchored community life in the area — not as a nostalgic recreation, but as a modern, upgraded version of what once existed. 

Conservation as community value
Beyond economics, rural tourism has been shown to generate environmental benefits: improved natural conservation, biodiversity protection, enhanced environmental awareness and infrastructure improvements that serve both residents and wildlife. ⁴
Hugarró’s commitment to restoring birch forest cover to 100% of its current extent — and the use of conservation funding generated by entrance fees, permits and concession arrangements — means the surrounding landscape will leave this project better than it found it. ³

The financial case: cost-benefit analysis

Cost advantages of the landscape hotel model

The landscape hotel model, particularly when combined with modular construction, carries structural cost advantages over conventional hotel development:

¹⁴

Modular construction also delivers predictable pricing and consistent quality control — critical advantages in Iceland’s environment, where on-site labour shortages and challenging weather conditions can cause severe cost overruns in traditional builds.

Revenue advantages
Landscape hotels occupy a premium pricing tier that conventional hotels in the same geography cannot access. The experiential rarity of the product — rotating cabins in an Icelandic fjord, geothermal pools fed by the earth itself, no light pollution, direct access to a waterfall hike — commands average daily rates (ADRs) that are structurally higher than comparably rated conventional product. This ADR premium, combined with the lean operating model, creates attractive unit economics.

Hugarró’s financial projections target 52% occupancy in Year 1, with individual cabins and hotel rooms sold to investors under a leaseback model generating estimated annual returns of 7–11%. ³

Sustainability as a commercial advantage

Sustainability certifications — BREEAM, Nordic Swan, GreenKey, EarthCheck — have moved from reputational bonuses to booking-decision factors. With 49% of luxury hotel guests now actively seeking eco-certified properties when booking, ⁸  these certifications are a direct driver of occupancy, not merely a marketing badge.

Furthermore, Hugarró’s geothermal energy system and ultra-efficient water filtration (90%+ water reuse, no chemical treatment) translate directly into lower operating costs — a competitive moat that conventional hotels simply cannot replicate without starting over from the ground up.

Conclusion: architecture in service of something larger

Landscape hotel design is not a trend. It is a correction — a return to the idea that great hospitality should enhance a place rather than consume it. The best landscape hotels feel inevitable: you cannot imagine the site without them, and yet you can barely see them when you arrive.

Hvalfjörður has waited quietly for the right project. A fjord of this beauty, this proximity to a major international hub, and this richness of natural and cultural heritage deserves something more thoughtful than a standard hotel block. Hugarró’s landscape-led design — with its dispersed cabins, rotating views, geothermal soul and commitment to restoring the land — is precisely the right answer to what this extraordinary place is asking for.

The market is ready. The site is ready. And the model works.

Hugarró Nature Retreat is in development at Litla-Botnsland, Hvalfjörður, Iceland. The project is designed by Studio SKA and targets opening in early  2028.

The more we explored the property, the more we realized how well its topography suits our project — more than we ever imagined. The cabins can be hidden from each other between the trees, allowing an unparalleled degree of privacy. The combination of topography and tree coverage was simply perfect for realising our vision.

Our guiding principle when choosing cabin sites was simple: you must be able to walk around naked without worrying about anyone walking by. We succeeded. And looking from cabin to cabin, the most you’ll see is its roof.

We’re happy to share a Google Earth KMZ file for a closer look. Just send us a mail.

 This 3D viewer also gives a great sense of the topography.

And last but not least, have a look at this page to see pictures and videos of each carefully chosen cabin site.

Enjoy and get excited !

Modular prefabricated construction is not simply a preference for Hugarró — it is the only construction approach that realistically reconciles the constraints we face: a chronic shortage of qualified local labour, volatile Icelandic weather, strict nature conservation rules that limit our on-site construction window, and the imperative to deliver a high-quality hospitality product on time and within budget. Every element of our build strategy has been designed around these realities.

The Icelandic imperative: why prefab is not optional
Building in a remote Icelandic location presents a set of compounding challenges that traditional in-situ construction simply cannot absorb:

• Labour scarcity and cost. Qualified construction tradespeople are in chronic short supply across Iceland. Where they exist, they are expensive and often not reliably available for remote sites. Foreign workers already account for roughly a quarter of Iceland’s entire workforce, reflecting how deep this structural gap runs.
• Weather exposure. Iceland’s wind, rain, frost, and rapidly shifting conditions make conventional on-site construction slow, unpredictable, and costly. Delays compound.
• Remote location. Mobilising and maintaining a large, multi-trade workforce on a remote site over many months is logistically complex and expensive.

Our strategy was therefore to out-design the dependency on local labour to an absolute minimum and to transfer as much of the construction process as possible to a controlled factory environment, where weather is irrelevant and quality is consistent.

There are no Icelandic companies that can deliver the combination of cost-effectiveness, precision, and relevant experience that we find in leading Central and Eastern European manufacturers. Most comparable projects currently operating in Iceland also use prefab units sourced from continental Europe — with varying degrees of success. We have been deliberate and thorough in our supplier selection.

The Birding Season: Our Construction Window Is Fixed
Iceland’s nature conservation legislation imposes strict seasonal access restrictions on ecologically sensitive sites — including the area around Hugarró. Nesting bird protection periods effectively close the site to significant construction activity from approximately May through August. This is a hard regulatory constraint, not a planning preference.

This means our window for on-site module placement activities runs roughly from September through April — Iceland’s most demanding months in terms of weather. The implications are significant:

• There is no flexibility to slide the programme into summer if something runs late
• A missed placement window means a minimum one-year delay to project opening
• Every unnecessary day of on-site activity is a day of unnecessary exposure to cost and risk

Modular prefab directly resolves this constraint. Module fabrication proceeds in the factory regardless of season, while site preparation and foundations are completed in Iceland in parallel. When the placement window opens, the modules are ready. The actual on-site placement operation is compressed into weeks, not months — well within the available window.

Factory & site: two workstreams running in parallel
One of the most powerful and often underappreciated advantages of modular construction is that factory fabrication and on-site civil works run simultaneously. While DMD Modular is manufacturing and fitting out the building modules in their Polish factory — including all interior fit-out, utilities installation, and quality testing — our team in Iceland is completing groundworks, foundations, and infrastructure. Neither stream waits for the other.

By the time the modules arrive on site, the ground is ready to receive them. This parallel working eliminates the sequential delays of traditional construction, where each phase must wait for the previous one to complete.

Our manufacturing partner: DMD Modular
Our modules are to be manufactured by DMD Modular, a leading Polish volumetric modular building company operating across Europe since 2016. Their portfolio includes hospitality, hotel, resort, residential, healthcare, and student accommodation projects in the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, and Iceland — making them one of the few manufacturers with direct Icelandic market experience and they came highly recommended by local hoteliers.

Relevant completed projects include a Hampton by Hilton (Bristol), a resort hotel extension (Belgium), Iceland’s Panorama Glass Lodge and multiple large-scale student accommodation schemes in Edinburgh and Copenhagen. DMD Modular operates under ISO-certified quality assurance processes and full compliance with European construction standards — including country-specific fire, acoustic, and structural requirements.

Factory-controlled production delivers measurably lower defect rates, superior thermal performance, and more predictable long-term operating costs compared to in-situ construction — all directly relevant to a 4-star nature retreat where post-opening remediation would be both costly and reputationally damaging.

Critically for our programme, DMD Modular will supply their own specialist installation crews to assist with on-site module placement. This eliminates our dependency on Iceland’s scarce and expensive local construction labour market for the most skilled and time-sensitive phase of the project.

The Logistics Chain
Our hotel consists of 48 modules in total. The cabin units are each made up of two halves. All modules will be transported by a specially chartered vessels sailing from a Polish seaport — a significantly more cost-effective and flexible option than standard ro-ro scheduled shipping services, and one that gives us full control over timing relative to our placement window.

Primary route — Port of Grundartangi:
The vessel docks at Grundartangi, approximately 30 minutes from site over ring-road quality infrastructure. Crucially, this stretch of the ring road is exceptionally quiet — carrying a maximum of approximately 30 vehicles per hour — meaning wide-load module convoys can move without traffic conflict, without night-time-only restrictions, and without the logistical complications that plague similar operations in more congested corridors through Reykjavik. Our team’s experience in maritime logistics is a further practical asset in coordinating this chain.

Alternative route — Nearby whaling station dock:
We are also considering to approach the owner of a whaling station with dock facilities located less than 10 minutes from the Hugarró site. If draft depth clearance is confirmed through a hydrographic survey, this option would reduce the road transport leg to a minimum and deliver meaningful additional cost and time savings. This remains an upside scenario under active development.

Crane strategy & module placement
The on-site placement of 48 modules has been planned around a tightly optimised mobile crane strategy designed to minimise crane repositioning — the single most expensive variable in the placement phase.

• Two crane positions cover the full placement of all 48 hotel modules.
• Each position allows the placement of an average of 2 cabins without repositioning
• Crane repositioning between the two positions is a single, planned move

This approach compresses what could otherwise be a lengthy, expensive, and ground-disturbing operation into a lean, efficient sequence — minimising both cost and the physical footprint of heavy machinery on ecologically sensitive terrain.

Time savings at a glance
The combined effect of parallel workstreams, factory fabrication, and optimised on-site placement is a dramatic compression of the overall project schedule compared to any traditional in-situ approach.

The practical summary: what would require 18 months or more of continuous on-site activity under a traditional build is reduced to a focused four-week placement operation, supported by months of factory production running in parallel and entirely outside Iceland’s weather and conservation constraints.

A practical guide to a meaningful upgrade

Why are you adding junior suites at all?
The answer lies in where luxury travel is heading. Across the high-end hospitality segment, the expectation has shifted: guests are no longer simply looking for a beautiful room — they want a genuine sense of space, a place to properly settle in rather than perch on the edge of a bed, and the feeling that their accommodation was designed with them specifically in mind. Junior suites have become a baseline expectation at properties positioning themselves in the upper tier of the market.

We looked carefully at what comparable Icelandic luxury properties offer and at broader trends in boutique hotel design, and the conclusion was clear: building junior suites into Hugarro from day one — rather than retrofitting them later — is simply the smarter way to open. Comparable properties like Hotel Rangá charge around €989 per night for a junior suite in high season; Blue Lagoon’s Retreat sits between €1,636 and €2,489 depending on view and season. There is clear, proven demand at that price point — and Hugarro is positioned to offer something genuinely competitive.

Why four suites — is that not too many for a 32-room hotel?
It’s the right number, and we thought carefully about it. Four suites represent just over 12% of our total inventory — enough to be a meaningful premium tier, not so many that scarcity disappears.

We’re placing two suites at each of two separate locations within the property. This allows us to:

• Create two distinct suite pairings with slightly different character and view angles, giving returning guests a reason to experience the other
• Spread the footprint across the property, so suite guests aren’t concentrated in one area
• Build in redundancy — if one pair is fully booked, the other may still be available

How do you create 39 m² suites — what’s the trade-off?
It’s a deliberate and transparent decision. Every three standard modules of 26 m² are reconfigured into two junior suites of 39 m². The middle module is divided equally between the two flanking rooms, giving each suite an additional 13 m² — enough space for a proper sitting area, a larger bathroom arrangement, and genuine breathing room.

The honest trade-off: four junior suites replace six standard rooms, meaning the overall room count reduces from 32 to 28 (net: two standard rooms fewer, across two locations of conversion). We consider this the right exchange — fewer rooms, but a meaningfully better product mix, stronger average revenue per room, and a clearer tiered offering for guests.

A 39 m² suite is comfortably within international junior suite norms, and the additional space transforms the in-room experience without requiring a different building type.

What will the junior suites actually look like?
The design details will be revealed closer to opening, but the guiding principle is that every square metre should be purposeful. Expect:

• A clearly defined sitting area — not a corner with a single armchair, but a proper space to decompress
• Enhanced bathroom — more generous layout, upgraded finishes, longer soak time
• Premium bedding and in-room features consistent with the upgrade price
• The same iconic Hvalfjörður fjord views that make Hugarro what it is — because the luxury here has always been outside the window, not in the square footage

What the junior suites will not be: a connecting door between two standard rooms dressed up as something it isn’t. That approach is a shortcut we ruled out. Guests at this level are discerning — they research, they read reviews, and they know the difference. The suites are designed as suites from day one.

How quickly can the suites be added — is there major construction involved?
None whatsoever. This is one of Hugarro’s genuine structural advantages: the hotel is built in a fully prefabricated, modular system. The junior suite modules are simply designed and specified differently from the outset — or slotted into the build sequence as a distinct module type. There is no retrofitting, no disruption to existing structures, and no phased construction headache. It’s the same process as adding any other room, just with a different configuration. The modular approach makes this kind of product differentiation not just possible, but straightforward.

How are the junior suites different from the freestanding rotating cabins?
They serve a fundamentally different guest. The junior suites sit within the main building — you have full access to the restaurant, lounge, and shared facilities while enjoying meaningfully more space and a more generous in-room experience. They’re the natural next step for guests who want a more expansive stay within the hotel itself.

The freestanding rotating cabins are a category of their own. At 55 m² / 590 sq ft, they offer:

• Complete physical separation from the main building — your own retreat, not an upgrade within one
• The rotating feature: the cabin turns to follow the sun, the aurora, or simply whichever view calls to you — a genuinely rare architectural experience found almost nowhere else in the world
• Maximum privacy: no shared corridors, no neighbours on the other side of a wall
• More space — 55 m² versus 39 m² is a meaningful difference when you’re settling in for several nights

The cabin is not just a bigger suite. It is a different kind of stay entirely.

What does each room type cost?

A few notes on how we arrived at these figures:

• The junior suite sits at roughly 1.5x the standard room rate — in line with what comparable Icelandic properties charge (Hotel Rangá’s junior suites start at approximately €989 per night in high season)
• The rotating cabin is priced at approximately 2.5–3x the standard room. This is not simply about size — it reflects uniqueness, total privacy, and an architectural concept that has no direct comparator in Iceland. Blue Lagoon’s top suites exceed €2,400 per night; our cabin rate is competitive without being aggressive
• All rates are room-only. Breakfast packages are available separately, giving guests flexibility while helping the kitchen plan
• A minimum 2-night stay applies to both junior suites and rotating cabins — this reflects the kind of stay these rooms are designed for, and ensures guests have enough time to genuinely experience them

Will you always be able to book a junior suite?
No — and that’s intentional. With only four suites in the property, availability is limited, particularly across the summer months and aurora season. We  wouild recommend our guests booking well in advance. 

The more we explored the property, the more we realized how well its topography suits our project — more than we ever imagined. The cabins can be hidden from each other between the trees, allowing an unparalleled degree of privacy. The combination of topography and tree coverage was simply perfect for realising our vision.

Our guiding principle when choosing cabin sites was simple: you must be able to walk around naked without worrying about anyone walking by. We succeeded. And looking from cabin to cabin, the most you’ll see is its roof.

We’re happy to share a Google Earth KMZ file for a closer look. Just send us a mail.

 This 3D viewer also gives a great sense of the topography.

And last but not least, have a look at this page to see pictures and videos of each carefully chosen cabin site.

Enjoy and get excited !