Iceland accommodation tips?

[vetrade]

We are doing a 7 day self drive around Iceland in August but I'm finding near zero availability of accommodation in more than half the places we intended to stay or nearby. We will only be staying one night in each place and our minimum requirement is a private bathroom. Have been searching with hotelscombined and booking.com but many B&Bs seem to do their own bookings.
Does anyone have any tips about how to best find accommodation over there, and if availability is likely to open up later? Do tour companies book out most places? Is airbnb a realistic option?

 

[ZigZagWanderer]

I tend to use Google Maps to find accommodation. It includes many independent places as well as those using the major sites. Typically the website is listed, but at the very least you can get the name to search, or a phone number.

It's also handy because I can calculate driving times between locations at the same time.

 

[ScubaMel]

You may have left it a bit late, given it is peak season and a lot of pent up demand from a lack of travel over the past few years. It’s also possible places have closed down due to the lack of tourists over the past two years. We did a similar trip in Aug 2019. Once you get past Diamond beach it becomes very sparse. We stayed at
guesthouse Fludir - Grund
hotel Dyrholaey - Vik
hotel hofn - hofn
icelandair hotel herald - egilsstadir
laxhus - husavik
North Star Stadarflot - hvammstangi
hotel Borgarnes - borgarnes
eldey airport hotel -Keflavik.

i hope that helps somewhat. The only one I wouldn’t recommend is North Star as there is no where nearby to eat …the best option was a petrol station that was close by. But in that part of the country there weren’t a lot of options to stay without driving another hour or two. I booked everything on booking.com but I booked everything in late 2018 for our trip in Aug 2019

 

[vetrade]

You may have left it a bit late, given it is peak season and a lot of pent up demand from a lack of travel over the past few years. It’s also possible places have closed down due to the lack of tourists over the past two years. We did a similar trip in Aug 2019. Once you get past Diamond beach it becomes very sparse. We stayed at
guesthouse Fludir - Grund
hotel Dyrholaey - Vik
hotel hofn - hofn
icelandair hotel herald - egilsstadir
laxhus - husavik
North Star Stadarflot - hvammstangi
hotel Borgarnes - borgarnes
eldey airport hotel -Keflavik.

i hope that helps somewhat. The only one I wouldn’t recommend is North Star as there is no where nearby to eat …the best option was a petrol station that was close by. But in that part of the country there weren’t a lot of options to stay without driving another hour or two. I booked everything on booking.com but I booked everything in late 2018 for our trip in Aug 2019

Thanks for that info. Yes, I have left it a bit late - normally I'm better organised but have been pre-occupied with multiple enforced flight changes on our OWA so I left the accommodation bookings until after I had them locked down.

 

[Townsend]

I would recommend a self drive with Nordic Visitor as it came with some great accomodation that we would never have found. However we did do this trip in winter when there is less demand.

 

[kpc]

We are going mid Sept and booked all our (refundable) accommodation about 9 months out....slightly more expensive as refundable. We had planned to go in June 2020 and we were able to cancel all our refundable accommodation.

 

[vetrade]

Got everything sorted - options were far better in both number and quality in Reykjavik and Akureyri so have booked extra nights in those 2 places from which we'll change our itinerary to do some day trips rather than having only a one night stay in each town. By reversing our direction of travel I also got it to work without any significant need to cover the same ground twice.
For anyone interested, Hofn and Myvatn were the areas which had virtually no availability and would need to be booked early

 

[kpc]

For anyone interested, Hofn and Myvatn were the areas which had virtually no availability and would need to be booked early

We have a night at each place booked

 

[vetrade]

We have a night at each place booked

Yes, but you were smarter than me and booked early!

 

[kpc]

Yes, but you were smarter than me and booked early!

We are going in early Autumn which is less busy

 

[Warks]

Waking up this thread - planning on going to Iceland May 2023. Just looking at the daily temps! 6 max but even midsummer is only 11 max! I'm going to have fun convincing Mrs Warks to go somewhere cold to get away from the cold in Aus - May in Sydney would be much warmer. But it sounds like the skies are fairly clear and it's dry mainly then plus the days are already very long. I think I can live with it. Thinking of getting in and booking a few things in the next month or so to be sure. Most guides say that May isn't too busy yet so that sounds good but I'll make sure we've got some bookings done before too long.

 

[Franky]

Waking up this thread - planning on going to Iceland May 2023. Just looking at the daily temps! 6 max but even midsummer is only 11 max! I'm going to have fun convincing Mrs Warks to go somewhere cold to get away from the cold in Aus - May in Sydney would be much warmer. But it sounds like the skies are fairly clear and it's dry mainly then plus the days are already very long. I think I can live with it. Thinking of getting in and booking a few things in the next month or so to be sure. Most guides say that May isn't too busy yet so that sounds good but I'll make sure we've got some bookings done before too long.

The poem about Gunga Din comes to mind here…

 

[kpc]

BOOK (refundable) ACCOMMODATION EARLY / ASAP!!

 

[vetrade]

Waking up this thread - planning on going to Iceland May 2023. Just looking at the daily temps! 6 max but even midsummer is only 11 max! I'm going to have fun convincing Mrs Warks to go somewhere cold to get away from the cold in Aus - May in Sydney would be much warmer. But it sounds like the skies are fairly clear and it's dry mainly then plus the days are already very long. I think I can live with it. Thinking of getting in and booking a few things in the next month or so to be sure. Most guides say that May isn't too busy yet so that sounds good but I'll make sure we've got some bookings done before too long.

Yes, book early especially if you're like us and don't do shared bathrooms. Suggest you also book a hire car early too. By the time all our flights were confidently bedded down after the Russians closed their airspace, I ended up paying 3 X the price I could have got in Oct 2021. Booking a car about 2 months out, there was almost no availability of any type anywhere - definitely found zero availability of our preferred SUV.

 

[kpc]

Suggest you also book a hire car early too. By the time all our flights were confidently bedded down after the Russians closed their airspace, I ended up paying 3 X the price I could have got in Oct 2021. Booking a car about 2 months out, there was almost no availability of any type anywhere - definitely found zero availability of our preferred SUV.

Yes our trip is in early Sept...I looked recently to see if car hire prices had come down since we booked about 6 months ago....same car is now double the cost!!

 

[Warks]

All good thoughts. Mrs Warks thinks the current plague will escalate next year and we shouldn't plan on overseas trips until 2024. I think I'll proceed along the refundable path as much as possible but still plan on going. We've missed out on three years of travels already.

 

[Denali]

Waking up this thread - planning on going to Iceland May 2023. Just looking at the daily temps! 6 max but even midsummer is only 11 max! I'm going to have fun convincing Mrs Warks to go somewhere cold to get away from the cold in Aus - May in Sydney would be much warmer. But it sounds like the skies are fairly clear and it's dry mainly then plus the days are already very long. I think I can live with it. Thinking of getting in and booking a few things in the next month or so to be sure. Most guides say that May isn't too busy yet so that sounds good but I'll make sure we've got some bookings done before too long.

We were there April 2019 and found the days like late Aug here - we needed our trusty Kathmandu polartec hoodie, beanie and wool socks with boots but it wasnt freezing until you got higher up in altitude and hubby stripped down to shorts and a tee for a bet. But keep an eye out for is the blasting crazy wind - we had this on our last day, it literally made it almost impossible to walk, buses cancelled, water at Blue Lagoon going upwards and flights from/to the US cancelled - but what a blast to experience.



Here is my thread on it

Iceland was calling, aka This is not Africa....

Hello! We arrived yesterday so I'll be updating this as I go but there'll be more pics than words (as this done on my phone) but here I go.... AFFer has taught me many things and one is to be flexible with my connections so when I started looking for routes to Africa but ended up in...

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

 

[Xrayspice]

We are doing a 7 day self drive around Iceland in August but I'm finding near zero availability of accommodation in more than half the places we intended to stay or nearby. We will only be staying one night in each place and our minimum requirement is a private bathroom. Have been searching with hotelscombined and booking.com but many B&Bs seem to do their own bookings.
Does anyone have any tips about how to best find accommodation over there, and if availability is likely to open up later? Do tour companies book out most places? Is airbnb a realistic option?

I went a few years ago. I stayed in an AirBNB. Technically it has its own private bathroom. It had the shower in the hallway!! The toilet was outside the apartment, and I think it was shared, but I never saw anyone else.

 

[Warks]

We were there April 2019 and found the days like late Aug here - we needed our trusty Kathmandu polartec hoodie, beanie and wool socks with boots but it wasnt freezing until you got higher up in altitude and hubby stripped down to shorts and a tee for a bet. But keep an eye out for is the blasting crazy wind - we had this on our last day, it literally made it almost impossible to walk, buses cancelled, water at Blue Lagoon going upwards and flights from/to the US cancelled - but what a blast to experience.

View attachment 284533

Here is my thread on it

Iceland was calling, aka This is not Africa....

Hello! We arrived yesterday so I'll be updating this as I go but there'll be more pics than words (as this done on my phone) but here I go.... AFFer has taught me many things and one is to be flexible with my connections so when I started looking for routes to Africa but ended up in...

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

That was a very enjoyable read and just makes me more determined to go! I was thinking seven days at first but from what I've read I think I'll need to push that out to ten days.

 

[ausfox]

We were in Reykjavik a week ago. The days were 15-16C with a lazy wind. Out of the wind it is comfortable and the sunlight is very bright. We usually used our puffer jackets and varied the inner layers. A very different and interesting land.
Prepare yourself for sulphur smelling showers as the hot water is geothermally heated.
We only stayed at one hotel and day tripped from there .