Best hotels in Reykjavík | Visually Compare Top Stays Side-by-Side

An Overview of the Boutique & Luxury Hotel Landscape in Reykjavík

Reykjavík is a city that resists easy categorization — too small to be a metropolis, too architecturally eclectic to be quaint, built from corrugated iron and volcanic stone by people who had no interest in performing either Nordic austerity or scenic-village charm. That material honesty runs through its better hotels. The Apotek Hotel occupies a former pharmacy on Austurstræti, its early twentieth-century bones preserved and played against contemporary Scandinavian interiors — a sensible choice for travelers who want proximity to the parliament square and Laugavegur without paying a significant premium. Nearby, the Iceland Parliament Hotel brings more considered design ambition to the same City Centre corridor, positioned just off Austurvöllur square in a building that leans into its civic adjacency rather than ignoring it. The Canopy by Hilton, also in this cluster, represents Hilton's more locally inflected midscale concept and performs reasonably well on that brief, with interiors that reference Icelandic textile and color traditions without overdoing the folklore. The more interesting recent addition to the city is the Reykjavík EDITION at the Old Harbor, which opened and immediately became the clearest expression of what contemporary hospitality architecture can do in a city that has largely proceeded through renovation rather than new build. Marriott's EDITION brand involves Ian Schrager as a creative collaborator, and his preference for dramatic material contrasts and theatrical public spaces translates here into a property that feels genuinely different from the City Centre cluster — quieter in its neighborhood, more resolved in its design language, and calibrated to travelers for whom the harbor-facing position and architectural specificity are the point rather than the convenience. Back in the City Centre, the Sand Hotel and the Reykjavík Konsulat Hotel — both operating in the upper-mid bracket — occupy the space between heritage building and contemporary interior, a combination that Reykjavík's existing building stock handles with some grace. The Konsulat in particular leans into the maritime consul heritage its name announces. The choice between staying in the dense walkable centre and relocating to the EDITION's harbor position is the primary editorial decision a design-conscious visitor will make here, and it shapes the entire experience of the city: the centre is denser, louder, more immediately legible; the harbor is slower, more atmospheric, and on clear days, oriented toward the sea and the Snæfellsjökull glacier beyond.