The Reykjavik EDITION Just Gave Downtown Its First Real Five Star Hotel

The Reykjavik EDITION opened in the historic heart of downtown, near the old harbor and close enough to Laugavegur and Harpa that you could walk to either one in ten minutes. It is Iceland’s first true five star modern luxury property, 253 rooms done in ash wood and pale gray oak, a lot of them with floor to ceiling windows looking out at the harbor and the mountains behind it. A few have their own private terraces.

The restaurant, called TIDES, has its own separate entrance right off the harbor and focuses on Icelandic seafood and other ingredients sourced locally, which fits a city where half the good meals you will have are built around what came off a boat that morning. There is also a rooftop bar, a lobby lounge, a cocktail bar, and a casual cafe, so the hotel functions as its own small ecosystem if a long travel day means nobody wants to go find dinner somewhere else.

The spa is the part that actually made me sit up. It is built as what they call a social spa, meaning the wellness spaces are designed for groups moving through them together rather than a solo treatment room experience. For a family trip that is a real difference. A spa that assumes people arrive in twos and threes reads very differently than one built for a couple sneaking away without their kids.

None of this makes the EDITION a budget stay, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What it does is give Reykjavik something it plainly didn’t have before, a downtown hotel that competes with what a family could get in London or Copenhagen at the same price point, in a city that historically punched below its weight on hotel quality relative to how much people were already willing to pay to be here.

For families I still route most first Iceland trips toward a mix of hotel types rather than one splurge property for every night. A few nights somewhere like the EDITION at the start or end of the trip, when everyone wants a real bed, real water pressure and a short walk to dinner after a long flight, paired with more practical, larger family suite hotels for the nights bracketing a Golden Circle day. That split gets you the splurge without paying five star downtown prices for every single night of the trip.

Book it early if a stay here is part of the plan. A new luxury property this visible fills up around any high season window fast, and Reykjavik’s hotel supply downtown is small enough that a handful of good nights getting booked out changes your options citywide.

Our Reykjavik with kids guide has the neighborhoods laid out and where I actually send families to sleep depending on what the rest of the trip looks like.