“Hotel-keeping is my retirement hobby – I had been wondering what to do after running one of Iceland’s largest fish exporting companies,” says Fridrik Pálsson, owner of the 52-room Hotél Rangá, 75 miles east of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik.
“I already had a horse farm, and a friend who also had a horse farm wanted to sell the 21-room lodge where he put up Americans who flew to Iceland to spend a few days trialing horses before exporting them back home. That was 2003.
We spent an evening talking, and at the end I walked away with the front door key,” he recalled.
“No, I knew nothing about running a hotel but I had been a CEO with a particular interest in the psychology of management. For over 20 years, I had been traveling on business worldwide for about 200 nights a year (a couple of decades ago there were no daily flights between Iceland and Europe and I often had to spend a couple of days in London, usually at The Park Lane Hotel, waiting to get back home). I regularly chalked up at least two months every year in Portugal, at Cascais, Estoril or Lisbon.
“Over those years of experience, I knew that many so-called luxury hotels had plenty of gold fittings but not what I call genuine service. I realized that what makes the difference is staff attitude. I have always been strong in company culture and now, at Hotél Rangá, we have a very simple way of looking at things. We try not to say no,” he explained.
The worldwide 2008 business crisis was fortunately short-lived in Iceland because the currency, the kroner, collapsed, but it gave Pálsson access to less expensive capital. He has been able to expand what is now a sprawling, 25-hectare (62-acre) property, which he owns outright – across the adjacent River Rangá, which gave the hotel its name, he bought another 25 hectares, to prevent any other development. The river is alive with Arctic char and salmon, and there is no problem in getting day fishing permits from the local farmers’ consortium that holds those rights.
Iceland is increasingly popular with Americans, who now constitute 65% of the hotel’s business year-round (during winter months, the Northern Lights, aurora borealis, are a big draw and Hotel Rangá has a professional observatory with telescopes so advanced that even NASA scientists come to visit).
There are only four hours of daylight in mid-winter, but guests love having billiards, chess, jigsaws a good library and a memorable bar and, close by outside, three thermally heated hot tubs. The many activities also include biking, 4×4 exploring and, right from here, helicopter tours of the island. The one restaurant is so renowned that, at any time of year, it serves a nightly average of 100 diners.
There are five volcanoes in the area and the most famous eruption, in 2010, of Eyjafjallajökull, brought publicity, initially unwanted. “We immediately lost all our tourists but we were filled 100% with media, who frankly had nothing to do all day long except enjoy our hot tubs and other facilities,” he recalled.
Visitor names are confidential but such celebrities as Justin Bieber and the Kardashians have enthusiastically shared their hot tub moments, and an unprecedented filming of a 45-minute episode of Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Orange County” produced a flood of inquiries and bookings.
“I have been in marketing all my life, and I do not pay for celebrities, but I do know the value of networking,” said Pálsson, who graduated in economics from the University of Iceland. He was biking in Europe when he had a phone call from a Small Luxury Hotels of the World representative, who later came to Iceland to visit him.
“That is the only affiliation I need – my occupancy is usually 100% and it never goes below 50%, even in the lowest months of April and May,” he said with a canny smile.