Spa & wellness

In Iceland a spa break is built around geothermal water, so the best spa hotel is often the one closest to the right bath rather than the one with the biggest treatment menu. We list 227 stays tagged for spa and wellness in 57 destinations, averaging 9.1 out of 10 over 98,398 guest reviews. Read the descriptions closely: 138 of them mention a hot tub, 50 a sauna, and only 27 an actual spa. Hveragerði, Borgarnes and Selfoss lead with 13 stays each. Hveragerði is the hot-spring town, where Frost and Fire Hotel sits by geothermal springs with an outdoor pool, two hot tubs and a sauna. From Borgarnes, Krauma at Deildartunguhver, fed by Europe's most powerful hot spring, opened at the end of 2016. In the North, Akureyri has 12 stays and Húsavík has GeoSea, a geothermal seawater bath above Skjálfandi bay. In the East, Vök Baths floats in Lake Urriðavatn near Egilsstaðir and opened in 2019. If I had one spa night, I would pick it by the bath first and the room second. One rule applies everywhere, from the village sundlaug to the big lagoons: you shower without a swimsuit before getting in. Icelandic pools use little chlorine and rely on it. The lagoons have private shower stalls, the public pools rarely do. Hot tubs at rural guesthouses are usually outdoors, so a windy evening in winter can make a soak short.