Stays for the Iceland you came for.
Northern lights, geothermal soaks, glacier views, cabins on the Ring Road — find the kind of place your trip calls for, in towns all across Iceland.
Popular stay types
Boutique
Boutique in Iceland means small rather than grand: one harbour hotel in Keflavík, one hotel on Akureyri's waterfront and four apartment stays where you cook for yourself. The six stays on this page are in Keflavík, Hveragerði, Reykjavík and Akureyri; their scores average 9.23 out of 10, and together they have 2,671 guest reviews. Even the two hotels stay small: Hotel Berg has 36 rooms in five types, including loft suites, and Bryggjan has 17, all with a sea view. Hotel Berg is the one I would book for a first or last night. It stands above the small marina in Keflavík, at Bakkavegur 17, about a five-minute drive from Keflavík International Airport, offers free drop-off at the terminal and gives guests a warm sitting pool on its roof that looks over the boats. Fiskbarinn, its seafood restaurant, means no drive into town after a long flight, and Skessan í hellinum, the Giantess in the Cave at the marina, is about 160 m away. INNI, at Frumskógar 3 in Hveragerði, is my pick for the Golden Circle and the start of the south coast. The town sits on Route 1 east of Reykjavík; the units are two-bedroom apartments and studios with full kitchens, and the property has a sauna, a steam room and a hot tub. The Hveragerði geothermal park is about eight minutes away on foot, and the Reykjadalur trailhead, where you walk up a valley to bathe in a warm river, is about seven minutes by car. It does not suit anyone who wants bars outside the door: Hveragerði is a small greenhouse town. In Reykjavík, the two choices pull in opposite directions. 46heima is at Laugavegur 46, on the main shopping street in 101, with kitchenettes and balconies; there is no front desk and the building has no lift, so heavy cases go up the stairs. Casa Dísa is at Langholtsvegur 92 in 104, about 4 km from the centre near Laugardalur, the valley of the Botanical Garden and the Laugardalslaug pool; its apartments have full kitchens and garden views. I would take 46heima for a short city break on foot, and Casa Dísa with a car and a wish for quiet nights. In the north, Bryggjan Boutique Hotel is on Strandgata, on Akureyri's harbour front, with a sauna and a hot tub, and Akureyri Airport is about six minutes away by car. LL Properties L19 is a four-bedroom apartment in Akureyri with a terrace, a barbecue and private parking, which suits a large family or two couples travelling together. If you drive on to Mývatn, Route 1 runs east of Akureyri through the Vaðlaheiðargöng tunnel, which has no booth: the toll is paid online at veggjald.is.
Budget & guesthouse
Iceland's simple stays are guesthouses, gistiheimili in Icelandic, and hostels: family-run houses and farms with a few rooms, often a bathroom down the corridor and a kitchen that guests share. This page gathers 238 of them in 59 places, with an average guest score of 8.83 out of 10 over more than 100,000 reviews. They cluster where the Ring Road needs an overnight stop: Vík í Mýrdal has 18, then Höfn, Hvammstangi and Fellabær, across the Lagarfljót from Egilsstaðir, with 12 each. Höfn Hostel combines volume and score, 9.0 over more than 2,700 reviews, and Höfn is a sensible base for an early start at Jökulsárlón. Two hostels stand out for the building itself: Hafaldan in Seyðisfjörður occupies the town's old hospital, and The Freezer, in the fishing hamlet of Rif on Snæfellsnes, is also a culture centre. HI Iceland runs 18 hostels around the country, Loft and Dalur in Reykjavík among them, with private rooms as well as dorms, which makes them more than a dorm option. Two details decide whether a simple stay works. The bathroom first: in a farmhouse a shared one can serve several rooms, so I would not choose one for a family with small children in winter. Then the guest kitchen, which matters more here than in most countries: outside the towns, restaurants are rare and close early, so I would shop at a Bónus or Krónan in the last town and cook in. A guesthouse with breakfast spares you the morning search for an open café. Check the opening dates too. Many rural guesthouses close for part of the winter, some from September to May, with no common calendar, so a winter Ring Road trip needs every night confirmed before you set off. The other daily habit is the municipal pool, the sundlaug, found in most villages: you shower without a swimsuit before going in, and the hot pots stand in for the bathtub that a simple room usually lacks.
Cabin
The best places to stay in a cabin in Iceland are the East around Egilsstaðir, the North around Akureyri, and the South between Selfoss and Vík. We list 111 cabins in 38 places; their ratings average 9.1 out of 10, from 25,662 guest reviews in total. Egilsstaðir has 8 and Fellabær, just across the Lagarfljót, 6 more; Selfoss and Akureyri have 7 each; Hella, Hvolsvöllur, Vík and Flúðir 6 each. Warm water changes the choice. 35 of the 111 cabins have a hot tub, a sauna or a spa on site, led by Flúðir with 5, then Selfoss and Akureyri with 4 each, and Borgarnes and Hvolsvöllur with 3. Five of the cabins also feature in our northern lights selection. For a remote or romantic cabin, I would still look north and east before the Golden Circle, where Selfoss and Flúðir hold the biggest clusters. A cabin is how Icelanders themselves holiday. The sumarbústaður, the summer house, is so central that trade unions own them and rent them to members: Efling alone has more than fifty around the country, including a cluster at Aratunga, near Reykholt on the Golden Circle. That explains the groups of wooden houses you pass on farmland, and why many are heated and used all year. Book one with a kitchen and shop before you arrive: outside the towns, restaurants are rare and close early. For a couple, my first pick is Brimnes Bungalows in Ólafsfjörður, about 50 minutes' drive north of Akureyri: wooden cabins by a lake, each with a private outdoor hot tub on its veranda and rowing boats for guests. It is not for anyone who wants to walk to dinner. In winter, many cabins sit at the end of a gravel track, so check the road on umferdin.is before leaving, and keep the last stretch for daylight, which is short in December.
Coastal
For a coastal retreat in Iceland, sleep on a fjord or a harbour in the north, west or east rather than by the south coast beaches: the North Atlantic stays cold all year, so the sea here is for watching seals, birds and storms, not for swimming. This page gathers 183 seaside stays in 48 towns; their average score is 9.10 out of 10, with 50,282 guest reviews in total. Akureyri, on the Eyjafjörður fjord, has the most with 13, then Grundarfjörður under Kirkjufell with 10, and Reykjavík and Hvammstangi with 9 each. For a romantic retreat, I would start with Hvammstangi. Eyri Seaside Houses scores 9.7 over 349 reviews, and the Vatnsnes peninsula begins at the edge of town: Route 711 loops around it for about 90 km, much of it gravel, past Hvítserkur, a basalt sea stack about 15 m tall. Seals come closest around low tide. The Illugastaðir seal-watching area closes from early May to 20 June while eider ducks nest, so in that window watch from the road, as the Icelandic Seal Center in Hvammstangi advises. The Westfjords hold 22 of these stays: Patreksfjörður 6, Súðavík 5, Hólmavík 4, Þingeyri 3, Tálknafjörður 2, Bolungarvík and Bíldudalur one each. Hotel West in Patreksfjörður, 8.4 over 432 reviews, is the only hotel among them; the rest are guesthouses, houses and apartments, and four score below 8. Since October 2020 the 5.6 km Dýrafjarðargöng tunnel links Þingeyri to Arnarfjörður and the southern Westfjords without the old Hrafnseyrarheiði pass, but Dynjandisheiði on Route 60 still closes for long spells in winter, so I would only plan a Westfjords loop from late spring to early autumn. In the east, Seyðisfjörður has 7 stays at the end of its fjord, among them Langahlid Cottages & Hot Tubs (9.7 over 97 reviews) and Dúlluhús (9.1 over 271). The only road in, Route 93, climbs over the Fjarðarheiði pass at about 620 m from Egilsstaðir, and snow and drifting can close it for days, so give a winter night there a spare day. Further south, Krákhamar Apartments in Djúpivogur scores 9.6 over 933 reviews, in a harbour village beside the Ring Road. For a first or last night, Lighthouse-Inn in Garður, 9.0 over 3,017 reviews, stands beside the Garðskagi lighthouses about a 10-minute drive from Keflavík airport. On the south coast, the black beaches are for looking: at Reynisfjara a light at the entrance turns green, yellow or red with the wave risk, a red light closes the beach, and sneaker waves run far up the sand, so never turn your back on the sea. If you want to swim, the coast is the wrong choice: book near a lagoon or a sundlaug instead.
