Treehotel offers a unique hotel experience: treerooms with contemporary design in the middle of unspoiled nature. Here you can forget about the time constraints of everyday life, enjoy the serenity, and rejuvenate in a sophisticated yet familiar environment. Founder and part owner Kent Lindvall writes about this extraordinary hotel, which is a childhood dream realised for him.
Treehotel is located in Harads, near the Lule river, about 100 kilometers from Luleå airport. The village has a population of about 600 and features a restaurant, shop and guest house. When you arrive at Treehotel, you check in at Britta’s Pensionat where we serve breakfast, lunch and dinner for Treehotel guests. Then it’s just a short stroll through the beautiful nature to your treeroom.
The most striking part of Harads is its magnificent surroundings. From Treehotel’s rooms you get a fantastic view of the Lule River valley, miles of forest and the powerful river. This unique hotel has been around since 2010, indeed in the time since then the staff have learnt much about high end travel and service.
We offer an experience that is timely – that is unique living close to nature – with high profiled design and an authentic experience in a sustainable hotel. The rooms include a UFO, a bird’s nest, a cabin, a mirror cube and a blue cone which changes colour to orange, all of which are located in trees. These spectacular creations have certainly attracted much attention over the years. There were sceptics here and there in the beginning, but eventually many of them also came to land in the bird’s nest and its neighbouring rooms.
International press and designer aficionados from all over the world began came to the Treehotel in large numbers when we started. Today, the hotel has naturally earned a place on many bucket lists.
Over the years, it has attracted everyone, from international celebrities, designers and fashion magazines, to ordinary people wanting to experience something as unusual as staying in a treehouse. For me, it can be summed up as a childhood dream with a touch of luxury and flair.
Treehotel was inspired by the film ‘The Tree Lover’ by Jonas Selberg Augustsen. It’s a tale of three men from the city who want to go back to their roots by building a tree house together. ‘The Tree Lover’ is a philosophic story about the significance of trees for us human beings. The idea behind Treehotel is to offer high-standard accommodation in a harmonious place where daily stress melts away. Guests can relax and renew their energy while surrounded by unspoiled nature.
Together with some of Scandinavia’s leading architects, we created our uniquely designed ‘treerooms.’ The rooms are suspended 4-6 meters above ground, boasting spectacular views of the Lule River. A very important part of our concept is to consider ecological values and make minimal environmental impact. For this reason, we devote considerable resources to finding sustainable construction and energy solutions.
We build our treerooms in the natural forest while hardly affecting the surroundings. We choose material and construction techniques that make as little environmental impact as possible. We build on live trees without destroying the tree and we do not chop down any trees or damage nature while building. For the main part, we use local construction companies.
Each room has a modern, environmentally friendly combustion toilet where everything is incinerated at 600 °C. The toilets are completely odourless and powered by electricity. The Mirrorcube, on the other hand, has a freezing-toilet, also electrically powered and completely odourless. In winter, it also contributes to heating.
The staff here are the most important resource we have – we are six-person team here all of whom are full-time. As a small company, all of our staff act as hosts and they represent our unique brand, including Britta and I who are working hard all year round earn our pay. In short, the Treehotel is our life. I am in charge of marketing, Britta runs the kitchen and our youngest daughter is a huge asset to the company, working on the many activities that take place.
Between the three of us, we keep developing and realising new ideas. The large Dragonfly conference building has been added to the list of popular rooms and in 2016 and the seventh room is being built, a suite that will be extraordinary in every sense of the word. It is higher up, and is larger and more luxurious than any of the other rooms we offer.
Having said this, keeping up with industry trends is becoming increasingly difficult as new technology is released daily. We are trendsetters and have created a new hotel product. We try to keep up with all technological developments, but our focus is to ensure that all of our guests are satisfied after they have spent time with us.
Our goal for the future is not to build many rooms in the same place. We want to be an exclusive hotel with just a few choice rooms. We envision a future with a strong brand and more Treehotel in other places in the world. I certainly hope to go around the world and open more unique Treehotel within five years.
In terms of the future, I would say that challenges are changing travel trends in the world and there are economic changes that our customers are facing. Having said that, there is no doubt that we have a strong and well-known product today. It is important to maintain the quality development of the product and give each guest an unforgettable experience when they come and stay at the Treehotel.