Ranga is a very very nice hotel set away from Route 1 but very easy to find and signposted.
We were extremely lucky to be given an upgrade to a deluxe room which had a comfy sofa and jacuzzi bath. Ask and you may get!
The food served is of a very high quality as suggested by previous reviewers but not sure it is Michelin * standard. Breakfast has a wide and quite healthy selection. Dinner is pretty hefty price-wise and freshly cooked so be patient! The bread is really good! There is also little else around in the immediate vicinity culinary-wise so consider eating a main meal at lunchtime if you're staying several days.
The staff were very helpful in advising where to go which was a nice touch.
I would highly recommend Ranga for exploring the southern coast of Iceland down to Vík and beyond, but save up as it is not cheap.

A peaceful and tranquil hotel but of very high standard. Excellent location for viewing the Northern Lights as no pollution from street lighting but be careful exploring around the hotel after nightfall - it's very dark!
Food is excellent and staff attentive and the jacuzzis under the stars are to die for!
Look out for the Polar Bear in reception -0 he's very impressive!

Fabulous hotel. My friends and I have just returned from Iceland and stayed at Ranga for 5 nights. We had booked for 4, but got snowed in and the hotel put us up for a 5th night at a significantly discounted rate.

The hotel itself is luxury: clean, comfortable rooms, hearty breakfast (full cooked and continental buffet breakfast, including waffles!!).

The restaurant is not inexpensive, but the food is suberb: beautifully cooked, very tasty and tender lamb, sweet and fresh seafood -- rivals many Michelin-starred restaurants in London.

Above all (and earns this hotel the 6th and 7th stars), the staff are wonderful. From the manager, to the waiters, the reception staff -- all couldn't be friendlier or more helpful. They were a fount of knowledge on all things Iceland -- from predicting the Northern Lights, to booking us activities to helping us navigate our way through the snow / ice-covered roads. The staff really were lovely and couldn't do enough for us.

And we were very lucky to see the aurora clearly on 2 nights which just added to the magic...

Spent two nights at this hotel (27-29 January) in the hope of seeing the Northern Lights. Seeing Hotel Ranga on Vacation Vacation Vacation on Channel 4 last year gave us the inspiration to visit Iceland. It seems we chose the wrong weekend as the previous week saw a great display as far south as Northern England! We arrived quite late (it's about 2 hrs from the airport and we'd arrived post-heavy snowfall and sunset was around 4pm). The hotel is designed in a log cabin style and our room (8) had one of the hot-tubs directly outside. We ate at the restaurant on both nights with a 3 course dinner with wine on night 1 and a 2 course with wine on night two - total for 2 was £300. That said, whilst the wine was extremely expensive, there was plenty of choice and the food was delicious and very well presented - I'd even go as far as to suggest that it would be Michelin standard food. The hotel manager worked the tables and spoke to everyone and went out of his way to ensure that everyone was having a relaxing break and their needs were attended to and this was true of all the hotel staff.

Breakfast was plentiful catering to all tastes - British, Continental and local.

Our room was comfortable with soft pillows and bed which allowed you to drift off to sleep effortlessly. The bathroom had underfloor heating and consisted of a large corner jacuzzi bath with shower. The TV had about 6 TV channels which I think were all UK or local (didn't really pay much attention as it was the last thing on our mind!).

The weather was totally against us this weekend as it was damp and dismal - like a typical dreary day in the UK so we didn't manage to see much of the landscape and certainly not the northern lights! However, if you stay here and are fortunate, the hotel runs a system at reception where if you want to be woken up during the night if the lights "start", then they will do so if you tick your room number on the printout on the desk so you can go to bed safe in the knowledge that if something happens, you'll know about it without having to stay awake all night!

The location of the hotel (about 8km further along route 1 from Hella) is remote and almost isolated so is a perfect location for viewing the Aurora. We just hope you have more luck in realising a lifelong dream than we did....maybe we'll need to book a return visit in the future...!!