The first thing Etienne from Feinheit did before buying an Iglucraft cabin was book a flight to Tallinn.

Not because he was convinced. Quite the opposite.

Running Feinheit Hotel in the German countryside, he approached the idea of modular hospitality with suspicion. Beautiful websites were one thing. But he wasn’t interested in buying another photogenic object for Instagram. He wanted to understand whether the thing had substance.

“Germans are always a little sceptical,” he says, smiling. “I wanted to see the company myself. The production. The people.”

So he visited Iglupark on the edge of Tallinn’s old industrial quarter — the unlikely little waterfront village where smoke rises from black timber saunas and guests wander around in robes, somewhere between the Baltic Sea and a very Estonian kind of silence.

That visit changed the project entirely.

“What I realised there was that this is not really about cabins,” he says. “It’s about creating emotions.”

Back in Germany, Etienne was already shaping Feinheit Hotel into a quieter, more intentional kind of retreat. Surrounded by gardens and countryside, the property didn’t need a large wellness complex or an aggressive expansion strategy. The opposite, really.

The idea was simple enough: create a private escape where guests could disappear for a weekend without notifications or spa-resort choreography. Somewhere couples could arrive on a Friday evening and exhale properly by Saturday morning.

The challenge, unsurprisingly, was Germany.

“There are many rules,” he says diplomatically.

Cabins occupy an unusual legal category somewhere between buildings and movable structures, and much of the planning phase involved finding the right location and navigating approvals.

Once everything was approved, however, the practical side became surprisingly straightforward.

“We were honestly a little afraid because we handled parts of it ourselves,” Etienne says. “But everything worked exactly like they said it would.”

That reliability became one of the things he appreciated most throughout the process.

“There was never a moment where I thought, ‘They didn’t tell me this before.’ Everything was transparent and flexible.”

The only real challenge came during unloading, when the local machinery available on-site turned out to be slightly too weak for the installation.

“We almost crashed them,” he laughs now. “But we had a very good driver.”

What convinced him most in the end was not only the product itself, but the overall experience around it.

“I’m not a sauna expert,” he says. “But the experience I had at Iglupark was very special.”

During his visit to Tallinn, he spent time with the team, visited production and experienced the sauna culture firsthand.

“They took a lot of care of me,” he says. “And when I saw the production, I understood that people are really working carefully on the products. It didn’t feel industrial.”

Back at Feinheit Hotel, guests quickly began reacting to the cabins in the same way he had.

People walking through the garden would stop to look at them. Hotel guests asked about the sauna before it had even fully launched. Couples booked because the cabins immediately stood out from traditional accommodation nearby.

“The product explains itself,” Etienne says. “That’s very important to me.”

The shape became part of the attraction.

“Guests ask what it is, they touch it, they ask why it has this shape.”

Most visitors so far have been younger couples looking for quiet weekends away from cities and routines.

“They understand immediately this is a place to escape normal life,” he says.

The cabins have also slightly shifted the positioning of the hotel itself.

“It closes the gap between a normal hotel and a large wellness spa hotel,” he explains. “But in a more natural way.”

That has also created opportunities for premium pricing and additional sauna bookings from existing hotel guests.

“It definitely allows us to charge a little more,” he says.

Still, Etienne speaks about the project without exaggeration. The goal was never rapid expansion or instant scale. “We want to grow sustainably,” he says. 

But when asked whether he would consider adding more cabins in the future, his answer comes quickly.

“Yes,” he says. “Definitely.”

https://feinheit-hotel.de/