Fogo Island Inn Turned a Failing Fishing Economy Into Newfoundland's Most Talked-About Stay

Fogo Island sits off the northeast coast of Newfoundland, a place of bare rock, fishing outports and a coastline the island's own tourism board once only half-jokingly located near "one of the four corners of the flat earth," a nod to a local legend involving the Flat Earth Society. It is an unlikely setting for one of Canada's most architecturally ambitious hotels, but Fogo Island Inn, which opened in 2013, was built precisely because the setting was struggling rather than in spite of it.

A hotel built to fund a community

The inn is the flagship project of Shorefast, a charitable foundation founded by Fogo Island native Zita Cobb after the collapse of the northern cod fishery had hollowed out the island's economy. Shorefast owns the inn outright, and by its own account channels the hotel's operating surplus back into the foundation's economic and cultural programmes on Fogo Island, including a boat-building shed, artist residency studios and a geopark project, rather than to outside shareholders.

Architecture built to withstand the Atlantic

Norwegian-Canadian architect Todd Saunders designed the inn on slender stilts, echoing the timber platforms Fogo Island's fishing families traditionally used to store gear above the tideline, while orienting long walls of glass toward the open Atlantic rather than away from it. The 29 rooms and suites are each different, furnished with locally made quilts, hooked mats and furniture produced in Shorefast's own workshops, and the building includes a cantilevered library, a small cinema and a rooftop hot tub looking out over the water.

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Beyond the inn

Fogo Island itself remains a working place rather than a resort enclave: its ten outport communities still fish and process crab and shrimp, and visitors can walk to Brimstone Head, watch icebergs drift past in spring, or visit the artist studios Shorefast has built across the island as part of its long-term residency programme. Reaching it involves a flight to Gander or a drive from St John's followed by a car ferry, a journey that keeps visitor numbers modest relative to the attention the inn receives internationally.

Traveller tips

• The inn is reached via ferry from Farewell, Newfoundland, a roughly 45-minute crossing that should be booked or timed around the ferry schedule, especially in shoulder season.
• Spring brings iceberg season along this stretch of coast, though sightings are never guaranteed and vary year to year.
• Fogo Island has limited dining and shopping outside the inn itself; many visitors base most meals around the inn's own kitchen, which sources heavily from local fishers and foragers.
• Weather changes quickly this far out in the North Atlantic, so pack layers and waterproofs regardless of season.