In celebrity-dense Harads, sustainability was a matter of course many years ago. Hotel rooms in the trees, spa on the river, all inclusive in the forest and nature tourism in harmony with animals and nature are part of everyday life. It is also the social sustainability where the area’s growing hospitality industry spills over into a variety of industries in a strong business community.
With the two flagships Treehotel and Arctic Bath, the growing alpine resort Storklinten and several other smaller tourist companies, the destination Harads is an internationally known place and reason to enter the county and the country. The big international breakthrough came in 2010 with Treehotel’s first of today seven rooms that attract celebrities from all over the world. One of the cornerstones of Treehotel’s concept is sustainability, in everything from a self-designed water solution in the rooms to the choice of materials, creating jobs and benefiting the local business community.
Treehotel. Photo: KOMM / Boden municipality.
Arctic Bath. Photo: Mats Engfors / Fotographic.
In 2019, the next facility in the luxury segment, Arctic Bath, opened a floating SPA hotel on the Lule River, with both land-based rooms and rooms out on the water. Here, too, environmental thinking is a matter of course on many levels. The solutions have, for example, involved the local company BOMEK, which, among other things, has specially manufactured Arctic Bath’s pellet-driven sauna heaters and the foundations for several of Treehotel’s wooden rooms.
Local ingredients and electric snowmobile
Both hotels serve local ingredients from the local food producer Svantes Vilt & Bär, whose business has worked climate-smart long before the concept of climate-smart even existed. Delicacies from their range are also cooked over the fire at the activity company Hide & see in Svartlå. There, game viewing is offered from a comfortable bear hideout that is powered by solar cells and environmentally friendly electric drill is used for ice fishing. At Pure Lapland outside Harads, all-inclusive and silence under the stars is offered at a completely private facility. The activity company Arctic Adventure has contributed with moving in and local involvement. At the gas station in Harads, you can charge your electric car, in the Storklinten ski resort, investments are made in electric snowmobile and virtually the entire Harads is heated by the local local heating plant. To name just a few examples of the obvious sustainability of the countryside.
Cultivation at Treehotel in Harads. Photo: KOMM / Boden municipality
Charging pole in Storklinten. Photo: Mats Engfors / Fotographic.
Electric snowmobile on charge in Storklinten. Photo: Mats Engfors / Fotographic.
The world’s most sustainable
The green thinking was recently supplemented with the two-year project “The world’s most sustainable high end destination”. A dozen companies connected to the hospitality industry in Harads participated and have, among other things, worked with place innovation, form, function, taste experiences, involved the local population in hosting and invited the local area to a hospitality industry day. All participating companies were offered the opportunity to certify themselves within Nature’s Best, which is the Nature Tourism companies’ quality brand with international standards. The project was owned by the municipality of Boden and financed by the Swedish Board of Agriculture and the European Agricultural Fund.
Charlotta Lennartsdotter, Café barnens å, Mikael Suorra, Hide & see, Birgitta Jonsonn-Lindvall, Treehotel, Kent Lindvall, Treehotel, and Malin Nilsson, Storklinten, have all been involved in the project “The world’s most sustainable high end destination”. Photo: Mats Engfors / Fotographic
– Sustainability for us is so much more than charging posts and electric cars, although it is also important and has emerged during the project. The big gain is the social sustainability, to get together, bring the community together and work with common values in the long term, sums up Britta Jonsson-Lindvall, project manager and also one of the founders and co-owners of Treehotel.
From the project, several new ideas and collaborations have emerged for continued investments with the goal of becoming the world’s most sustainable high-end destination.
Anna Bergström
