Hotel Rangá is one of southern Iceland’s travel institutions. Located in the southwest near the small town of Hella, it opened in 1999, and has developed a reputation for luxurious countryside stays on the shores of the Rangá river.

The hotel sits at the end of a short road, just 400 metres from Route One. It’s an unassuming low-rise wooden building, and as we park up and walk around the grounds, I’m surprised to find I can hardly hear the traffic.

The hotel’s 52 rooms come in various shapes and sizes, from trim, well appointed bedrooms to large suites with various styles and themes. The rustic wooden corridors are lined with colourful paintings by local artists and various cosy nooks, including a rustic game room with chess boards and a pool table and an attic lounge with views of the locale.

Such a perfect day

Many of the rooms have doors that open out onto a small private deck, and terraces with a couple of shared hot pots. After a quick dip in the open air, we take a short walk to the banks of the Rangá. It’s a glorious day — the best of a mixed summer — and we sit on a bench to soak in the sun.

The area is rich in wildlife, with territorial arctic terns patrolling the banks, and long-billed snipes rustling in the undergrowth. A lone fisherman stands in the downstream shallows, whipping their line back and forth as they cast around the glittering river in search of salmon. It’s a picture perfect moment in an unpredictable Icelandic summer.

Dining with a glacier

The Eyjafjallajökull glacier looms large over the landscape. Its graceful curve is visible from the riverside, and most of the hotel’s windows, including the on-site restaurant. Entering the airy dining room, we’re greeted and seated by the hotel’s owner, Friðrik Pálsson. He’s an amiable host who chats and mingles with the guests, recommending wines, answering questions, and telling stories about the area.

As we dine on carefully plated scallops, tart reindeer carpaccio, and lightly salted bacalao, we watch the evening light playing over Eyjafjallajökull. Sometimes, it appears a dusty pink hue, lurking almost invisibly against the soft purple sky. From time to time, it vanishes among banks of fast-moving clouds, reemerging moments later, like a radiant white beacon standing high over the southern countryside. It’s a rare pleasure to spend several hours with a glacier, and it feels like an extra presence at the table.

The consummate hotelier

The next day, I meet with Friðrik to talk about his 20 year tenure at Hotel Rangá. He’s smartly dressed and quick-witted, with a light demeanour and an easy, mischievous smile. As a young man, Friðrik worked for decades as the CEO of an Icelandic fishing company, which saw him travelling around the world for up to 200 days each year.

It was during this time that Friðrik developed his passion for hotels. “I loved the feeling you get in small hotels,” he says. “There’s more attention to detail. If you have someone in the lobby who immediately addresses you in a way that makes you feel welcome, you feel that you mean something to the hotel. Because without you, the hotel wouldn’t be there. These small details are something I try to teach my people.”

Hotel Rangá’s services include everything from helping visitors plan daytime excursions in the surrounding area, to a northern lights wakeup call. “The night staff has the obligation to look outside every 10 minutes if there’s even a possibility the northern lights will be visible,” says Friðrik. “We go all the way in everything we offer.”

Volcano hotel

Hotel Rangá has weathered some turbulent times since Friðrik took over, including the economic collapse of 2008 and the Eyjafjallajökull eruption that captured the attention of the world in 2010.

“I was up in the north west of Iceland when the Fimmvörðuháls eruption started,” says Friðrik. “I drove back during the night because nobody really knew what was going on yet. We had three weeks of fantastic touristic attention, and ran helicopter tours. When it stopped, the scientists said it was unlikely to be the end of it. And we waited, in a little despair of what would happen next.”

What came next was Eyjafjallajökull. “We lost all our clients overnight,” says Friðrik, “and nobody knew how long it would last. We weren’t in the danger area, so when things settled down, we thought about what we could do to get people here. And we contacted all the media we could think of.”

The plan worked, and for the weeks that followed, the hotel was full of journalists from around the world. “It was very interesting to have them,” says Friðrik. “Sometimes, there was nothing for them to do but wait. We had these guys who were used to being at the forefront of wars, sitting in the hot tubs and waiting. And we watched it all happen, the wind, the ash, and the pumice, day in and day out.”

A changing landscape

At that time Friðrik was also the chairman of Promote Iceland, which helped to shape the messaging around the eruption. “We had a PR company in the UK, and together with some Icelanders, they succeeded in getting the news out in a very positive way,” he says. “It put Iceland on the map in a bigger way than we could imagine.”

Friðrik laments the messaging about the recent Reykjanes eruptions, which may be responsible for an increase in cancelled trips to Iceland this year. “Unfortunately, it hasn’t been the same this time,” he says. “The sentence ‘Iceland declares emergency’ has been going around in the media. And that’s terrible, because it wasn’t a danger, apart from in Grindavík of course. It’s been very bad for the tourism industry.”

Alarming press isn’t the only issue facing the industry today. In the years since Eyjafjallajökull, Icelandic tourism has grown exponentially, to the cusp of overtourism. Friðrik speaks of cruise ship traffic that swamps sites of interest while offering little to the local economy, and clients who return from the Golden Circle complaining about fleets of tour buses clogging up Geysir.

“In 2018, and again last year, I think we have been on the verge of overdoing it,” he says. “I believe the only way to address this is to limit the number of people somehow. If you run a popular restaurant, for example, you don’t pack it with more tables. There would be no joy in eating there. So, like many things in life, you have to limit the number of people that are using a service at a given time.”

Fish in the sea

Friðrik likens the situation to lessons he learned in his early career. “When I was starting in the fishing industry in 1973, we thought we could fish as much as we wanted, and that it was endless,” he says. “Then came the knowledge that it was not like that, and we started quota systems. A new future was in front of us, and we would have to make as much out of every kilo we took from the ocean as possible.”

The industry’s response was seen as a positive step. “We were praised for having taken it so seriously, so quickly,” Friðrik continues. “I think we need that same thinking in the tourism industry today. Every customer should mean a lot to us — and there should not be too many.”

As we head back out into the sun for one last walk by the river, there isn’t a cloud in the sky. Friðrik ends on an optimistic note. “We are constantly monitoring what’s happening in the tourism business,” he says. “And I do think we’re getting onto the right track. Everybody seems to be talking about service, service, service. And I hope that people will realise that it’s the only way to go.”

Hotel Rangá is 103km from Reykjavík, just off Route One south. Book a stay at hotelranga.is.