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:
| Principle | Application |
|---|---|
| Architectural integration | Design reflects natural topography; buildings blend rather than disrupt |
| Minimal environmental impact | Eco-friendly materials; structures elevated on piers to reduce ground disturbance |
| Sustainable energy | Passive heating/cooling, solar, geothermal, water-efficient fixtures |
| Immersive nature experiences | Floor-to-ceiling windows, outdoor decks, stargazing terraces |
| Small built footprint | Dispersed cabins across large sites preserve wilderness character |
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
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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:
| Factor | Conventional Hotel | Landscape Hotel (Modular) |
|---|---|---|
| Per-key construction cost | High (complex structure, high material volume) | Lower — reduced footprint, fewer materials, efficient systems |
| Construction timeline | 18–36 months on-site | Compressed — off-site fabrication runs in parallel with site prep |
| Site disturbance | Significant | Minimal — shorter on-site window, fewer vehicle movements |
| Operational energy cost | Standard grid or conventional heating | Geothermal/renewable; 10–30% operational cost savings projected |
| Maintenance complexity | High — large, complex building systems | Lower — standardised modular systems, smaller spaces |
| Staffing model | Full-service, labour-intensive | Lean, efficient — lower housekeeping and maintenance overheads |
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.