This year marks the 10th anniversary of Iceland Unwrapped, my Iceland travel planning agency – and I thought it would be worth taking a moment to share about the past decade of experiences, challenges, connections and wonderful clients..
The idea came to me when I was living in Delft in the Netherlands. As an expat, I wanted to create a career that makes use of my education, experiences and network, and creates something different, useful and important. Creating a travel business – and focusing on my native country of Iceland made sense as the country was becoming more popular as a destination at the time, and the business had the added bonus of curing my constant homesickness for all things Icelandic.
The initial business idea was quite a bit different to what it’s become today. It involved creating an Iceland-specific house-swapping platform that would make it easier for Icelanders to offer the use of their homes in exchange for being able to use the homes of others in different parts of the world. Iceland was coming out of the economic crisis then, and I thought that house swapping would be a win-win that helped Icelanders travel again, and be able to create memories for friends, family and others to be able to experience. As an efficient traveler myself, I wanted to make it possible for Icelanders to see the world and connect with all kinds of people around the world, and for others to be able to see Iceland up close.
After my first week, I found out that this model was probably not going to work – as I got a request from someone wanting to travel to Prague for 4 days in October and I didn´t know anybody to reach out to in Prague.. Days later, I met two Americans that had visited Iceland 4 times without meeting an Icelander. I was the first Icelander they’d ever met, and we met in a park in Amsterdam.
How was that even possible?
I asked myself and realized these visitors weren’t the only ones missing out on the connection with the Icelanders and the opportunity to experience the hospitality and craziness of this nation in the middle of the North Atlantic. In my opinion this is an essential for a great Iceland tour plan.
That is when Iceland Unwrapped came about. The original name was Iceland by HelgaStina, but as Helga Stína as brand name was not seen to be a strong brand (unlike say “Kardashian” for example), my business coach advised a change, so my husband came up with an alternative, Iceland Unwrapped.
I thought it was a genius idea, as the intention of the company was to unwrap the beauty, charm and people of Iceland for the traveler.
That’s when the adventure really began. Stay tuned for the next installment in the story.
If you want to start your process of planning your travel adventure to Iceland here is more information and possibility of booking a chat to explore the options.