Spa Serenity
Big or small, built for the city or dropped in the middle of paradise, hotel spas are reacting to the consumer need for a relaxing getaway.
By Tony Dela Cruz, Managing Editor -- Hotels, 7/31/2000 11:00:00 PM
Hotel spas come in all sizes and purposes. At one extreme, there is the sprawling 50,000-sq-ft Spa Grande at the Grand Wailea Resort in Maui, Hawaii, at another is the compact oasis within a boutique hotel implied by Agua, a spa concept born at the Delano on South Beach and most recently deployed at Sanderson, the latest Ian Schrager/Philippe Starck boutique hotel in London.
Regardless of scope, however, experts say the best spas create sanctuary for their clients by responding to their various therapeutic needs. Sometimes the needs are as basic as blocking out the city noise for an hour, in which case the Agua “chill-out” suite, with oversized meditation beds, video screens and colorful steam rooms, is almost self-explanatory.
Boutique experimentation aside, however, most spas measure their capabilities on depth of experience. The larger the menu of facials and body treatments, the better the odds of offering a unique experience to a well-traveled spa client. The same thinking applies to a spa’s fitness facilities, where a type of hipness scale denoted by what is “In, Five Minutes Ago, or Out” can seem to dictate what equipment to buy and which exercise classes to teach. For example, after about an 18-month surge of popularity, hot rock massages appear to have peaked as a trend among the spas considered to be early convertors.
One trend that has more to do with the business end of the spa segment is branding. This year sees one of the more venerable spa names being extended outside its home base for the first time. The Greenbrier Spa, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, dates back to an inn that first opened in 1780. The Greenbrier name was licensed to the Westin Savannah Harbor Resort, Savannah, Georgia, and resulted in a new US$16-million spa, the Greenbrier Spa at Savannah Harbor.
Kathryn Tuckwiller, director of the original Greenbrier Spa, says the branding opportunity was fortuitous in that the parent company of Greenbrier was involved in the development of the Savannah resort. “The decision was if there was going to be an affiliation [with the new spa in Savannah], it would be with the Greenbrier,” she says. “We are not going out announcing that we are in the branding business.”
Still she acknowledges the power of having a well-known name on a new spa, as clients from the West Virginia outlet would likely support and recognize the new spa in Georgia. “We have two distinct types of clientele now,” she says. “Loyal guests, coming here for 20 to 30 years, and at the same time, we have young boomers, 35 to 55, generating a lot of income, who schedule heartily. They want multiple treatments and do not mind paying.”
Familiar Brand Name
Liz Hutto, the spa manager at the Greenbrier in Savannah, says the famous brand name brought with it the same décor, same menu of services, all done with the same product lines as the original Greenbrier. “We feel it is extremely important that those guests who have traveled to West Virginia can come here and say this is home, this is familiar.”
And the familiarity can require complex arrangements. In order to approximate the signature service of the Greenbrier, a dip in the local sulphur waters, the Savannah Greenbrier hired a chemist to develop the necessary chemical additives to replicate the White Sulphur Springs at the new spa.
The brain trust behind Agua, meanwhile, Leila Fazel and Rita Schrager, are anxious to spread the Agua brand to other properties besides the original spa at Delano and the just-opened spa at Sanderson. “We would like to see anywhere from one to five more Aguas open up,” says Fazel. Already in the works is one for the Miramar hotel in Santa Barbara, California. “You will see [spa] branding much, much more,” she says, because of the rising expectations of guests who want not just a spa, but one that fulfills pre-set expectations for experienced spa users.
One type of expectation that is cropping up among experts and consultants this year is the notion of sanctuary. “I think that hoteliers and developers are starting to look at the spa as a retreat within the resort,” says Melchior Baltazar, managing director of Miami-based Salud Spa, a manager/developer of spas for resorts. He says adjunct lounges and sitting areas, often accented by soft music and running water, were once thought of as passive spaces because they did not generate revenue, but they are now considered an integral part of the spa.
Dave Ruff, national fitness director at The Fitness Company, Washington, D.C., which owns and manages about 20 hotel spas and fitness centers, says another trend starting to infiltrate hotel spas is the broad concept of data mining. In the company’s most tech-driven health clubs, a web-based membership management system keeps workout records for each client, who can travel to other spas within the network and have a personal trainer access the information. “It tracks everything you do,” Ruff says. “We’re able to show you results, graph out information, your range of motion, speed of lifting, everything.”
Of course, an ongoing trend at the largest spas in resort destinations is the localized treatments that add uniqueness to a spa menu. This is fairly evident in most of the treatments at the Grand Wailea’s Spa Grande. The Lomilomi Pohaku treatment utilizes lava rocks indigenous to Maui, which are blessed and then used with an avocado-based liniment in massage. Other localized treatments include the Alii (Hawaiian for warrior) honey steam wrap, which uses Hawaiian salt for a skin exfoliation and oil from the indigenous kukui nut.
Elemental Healing
According to Lucia Rodriguez, assistant spa manager, the Spa Grande is also looking at proposals for seaside elemental healing, taking advantage of the powerful ocean waves of Hawaii. “But here we have to be careful,” she says, for fear of commercializing what spiritual Hawaiians view as a sacred connection to the ocean. There is also the risk that spa clients might view such therapies as implausible. Regardless, the Spa Grande already has many spa menu items imbued with local flavor, such as its signature amenity, a Honey Mango bath gel manufactured in Hawaii, and a seaweed body mask that is also sourced locally.
Not every resort spa in an exotic location chooses to key its treatments geographically. The Madison Resort Golf and Spa, Carmelo, Uruguay, uses oils, essences and incense imported from Thailand as its signature treatments, according to Karina Vilanova director of marketing. When Raffles International opens the new Amrita Spa in Singapore, the emphasis will be on more universally recognized spa treatments, such as a hydrotherapy room with vichy shower and a hydrotone body treatment capsule, as well as an array of aroma/herbal body therapies.
Exercise Trends
One of the stiff challenges in managing a spa is determining how to ride out exercise trends when the cost of equipment might be amortized over a period that is longer than the popularity span of a given routine. Take spinning, in which a fitness trainer leads a class of clients on a rigorous, high-intensity workout on stationary bikes. Some would say it has peaked in popularity, but it has become a staple at many spas.
“You do have to react with trends, no doubt,” says Cindi Schweitzer, spa director at the Grand Geneva Resort and Spa, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. “Spinning is a great workout, so you have to constantly market that tool; you have to take a look at who your members are and create things to sell that product.” One reason why spinning has peaked is it can be simply grueling, not the best attribute for repeat business. So the Grand Geneva has retooled, trimming 10 minutes from its 50-minute spinning class and using it for a pointing and stretching exercise.
Cost Justification
Salud Spa’s Baltazar says there are two ways to justify the capital outlay of exercise equipment. “You can do a straight return-on-investment analysis,” he says, but there are some activities like climbing that will always represent an important selling proposition. “There will always be a group it appeals to,” he says, and regardless of usage, its absence would be conspicuous. He points to the dramatic 40-foot rock climbing wall at the Canyon Ranch Spa Club in the Venetian, Las Vegas. “Will they ever get their money back? It is still a heck of a show piece.”
At the very high end of treatments, the cost analysis can be daunting, Baltazar says. A steam bath with a dome enclosure, which allows clients to relax in isolation and apply hot mud to themselves, typically costs US$100,000, “so the spa has to sell that at about US$200 or US$300 an hour.”
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