Inside the luxury-spa industry (The Times)
By David Rowan
In an oak-beamed office in Surrey, soothed by candles burning precisely judged combinations of cardamom, cinnamon and patchouli essences, Susan Harmsworth is poring over plans for one of the 55 high-end spas that she and her team of 110 currently have under construction. “I’ve just come back from America, Tuscany, Scotland, Monte Carlo and India, and I’m about to go off to Hong Kong again,” she explains matter-of-factly, a sign of the global demand for ever more sumptuous leisure spas. “We’re having to turn down up to ten inquiries a day.”
Welcome to the luxury-spa boom. As more of us seek solace from modern stresses in the indulgence of pampered “treatment” breaks, the world’s entrepreneurs are clamouring to open day spas and leisure resorts designed to satisfy our whims and, perhaps, enhance our wellbeing. From acupressure to ayurveda, Vichy showers to Vodder massage, today’s treatment menus are no longer being marketed simply to the super-affluent minority. Nor are their benefits being restricted to women: men, too, are now clamouring for “emotional balancing” or “personal rejuvenation”, apparently no longer embarrassed to book skin treatments or anti-ageing therapies.
According to the International Spa Association, based in the US, the sector doubled in size between 1999 and 2003, and continues to grow. Around nine out of ten luxury hotels now have a spa of some description, not least because it boosts occupancy and can typically raise customer spending by around one-third. The latest trend is not simply to visit them, but to live there permanently: buy into a residential development such as Saguaro Ranch in Arizona or Bighorn Golf Club in California, and you acquire not simply a home, but a piece of “spa lifestyle real estate”.
Yet for all the firm pounding the spa industry exerts on its clients’ wallets — with one recent estimate putting spending at £8.5 billion globally — there are still no agreed standards to guarantee the quality of your spa experience. The industry remains thinly regulated, with unsubstantiated claims being made for the health benefits of certain treatments, and an enormous variation in the quality of staff training.
The sector cannot even agree what constitutes a health spa: must it provide traditional water treatments, thought by the Romans to enhance health, or can the term more widely be applied to any treatment which claims to renew mind, body and spirit? Faced with such uncertainty, how can you know that your luxury break — whether a £2,000 week-long stay or an hour-long £32 facial — will offer the value, results and safety that you would expect? To Susan Harmsworth — one of the industry’s most influential voices after 35 years in the business — the current boom is not unalloyed good news for the consumer. “The vast majority now are jumping on the bandwagon. You can’t just throw together half a dozen treatment rooms and some heat experiences,” she says. “Some spas haven’t thought about the ‘journey’ the guest will experience.”
The huge architectural drawing splayed across her desk, her blueprint for the new Powerscourt Hotel in Ireland, offers a concrete definition of what Harmsworth, a youthful 60, understands by the spa visitor’s ‘journey’. Harmsworth, as the founder and chief executive of the spa consultancy Espa International, was called in to create the ultimate luxury spa over 3,500 square metres, which her team will then staff and manage for at least the first year.
“We define each space not simply in terms of size, but how it should feel, the emotions, the philosophy. You need to consider the nationality you’re catering for, whether you need separate-sex facilities, and how people work physiologically. Most people still don’t understand that taking a heat treatment, like a steam or a sauna, can offer a huge physiological benefit before a massage as it warms up your muscles. That’s what I mean about the journey.”
She pulls out a thick A4 guidebook — “we call it the Bible, but you’d better not write that” — which sets out in intricate detail the architects’ brief for the Powerscourt spa. With chapter headings such as “The Concept — Images and Emotions”, it specifies everything from the frequency of treatment-room air changes to the hidden spaces where umbrellas will be stored.There will be 20 soundproofed treatment rooms, as well as a main pool, smaller “vitality” pools, steam rooms and a mixed sauna. Much of the budget will go on ensuring constant temperature and air control. “We can’t have smell transfer,” Harmsworth explains.
And then, halfway through the build, comes the most critical part of the project, one which will swallow 50 per cent of the running costs: the recruitment and training of carefully selected staff. She says: “The reputable hotels will not use unqualified therapists, but I know of certain health farms that do. That’s really unethical — do you know how much harm that can cause?”.
There are currently about 60 bodies offering accreditation for those seeking to work as spa therapists in Britain. Formal training ranges from courses lasting just a few weeks to a two-year curriculum geared towards a National Vocational Qualification. Yet with no national regulation of the industry, recruitment standards are left to individual employers, as is the level of continuing workplace training. The recent spa-building boom has raised concerns that a shortage of better trained staff has led some employers to use relatively inexperienced therapists, some recruited from overseas. “The industry has to take much more responsibility for its clients’ wellness,” Harmsworth says.
“It’s quite dangerous to offer some treatments to people on medication. To the wrong person, even a sauna can push your heartrate up. Probably one in three people coming into a spa will have some sort of condition or be on medication, and a good spa will ask and will not treat you without a doctor’s permission,” adds Harmsworth. Yet although it is standard procedure for established spas to offer new visitors some sort of basic medical questionnaire, research conducted by Body&Soul suggests that therapists do not always make inquiries.
Hundreds of readers responded when Body&Soul invited your detailed verdicts on spas you had used in Britain and abroad. Your feedback, while generally positive about the quality of spas sampled, suggests a worrying lack of consistent policies for ascertaining guests’ health before treatments were applied. Readers who had visited 30 out of the 75 spas mentioned in your dispatches reported not having been asked whether they suffered from any allergies.
Guests at 18 sites, including British hotel and destination spas, claimed that their therapist had asked no questions about their health or medical history.
Roisin Isaacs, deputy chairman of the Spa Business Association, a 120-member trade body, disputes these claims, particularly those by readers who visited destination spas as opposed to hotel spas (Isaacs is co-owner of Ragdale Hall Health Hydro, in Leicestershire). “All spa treatments for a new client are preceded by a questionnaire of sorts, and the questions to ask are detailed in the therapists’ training,” she insists. “The difficulty we have is controlling the big growth sector, the hotels.”
After five years of intense growth, the association recognises the need for tighter self-regulation. It is now working with Visit Britain, the tourism authority, to develop the first nationally agreed requirements on the quality of services and training, due to launch next April.
Another uncertainty for customers is whether treatments — even if carried out to specified standards — actually offer any proven benefit. In a bid to differentiate themselves, spas have been offering increasingly exotic wraps and massages, often at prices not designed to enhance the serenity of one’s bank balance.
Food-based treatments have proved particularly fashionable: Pennyhill Park, Surrey, lists a “champagne foot soak”, and the Mardavall Hotel in Mallorca provides a caviar facial. “My biggest worry is treatments that don’t have a physiological benefit,” Harmsworth says. “Ayurvedic massage or shiatsu has huge value when done correctly, but at the moment you’ve got marketing people dreaming up gimmicky things that don’t actually do anything.”
Yet these specific concerns should not detract from the wider physical and psychological benefits most users — Body&Soul readers, at least — believe that they have gained from visiting high-end spas in Britain and abroad.
(The Times, March 25 2006)
In an oak-beamed office in Surrey, soothed by candles burning precisely judged combinations of cardamom, cinnamon and patchouli essences, Susan Harmsworth is poring over plans for one of the 55 high-end spas that she and her team of 110 currently have under construction. “I’ve just come back from America, Tuscany, Scotland, Monte Carlo and India, and I’m about to go off to Hong Kong again,” she explains matter-of-factly, a sign of the global demand for ever more sumptuous leisure spas. “We’re having to turn down up to ten inquiries a day.”
Welcome to the luxury-spa boom. As more of us seek solace from modern stresses in the indulgence of pampered “treatment” breaks, the world’s entrepreneurs are clamouring to open day spas and leisure resorts designed to satisfy our whims and, perhaps, enhance our wellbeing. From acupressure to ayurveda, Vichy showers to Vodder massage, today’s treatment menus are no longer being marketed simply to the super-affluent minority. Nor are their benefits being restricted to women: men, too, are now clamouring for “emotional balancing” or “personal rejuvenation”, apparently no longer embarrassed to book skin treatments or anti-ageing therapies.
According to the International Spa Association, based in the US, the sector doubled in size between 1999 and 2003, and continues to grow. Around nine out of ten luxury hotels now have a spa of some description, not least because it boosts occupancy and can typically raise customer spending by around one-third. The latest trend is not simply to visit them, but to live there permanently: buy into a residential development such as Saguaro Ranch in Arizona or Bighorn Golf Club in California, and you acquire not simply a home, but a piece of “spa lifestyle real estate”.
Yet for all the firm pounding the spa industry exerts on its clients’ wallets — with one recent estimate putting spending at £8.5 billion globally — there are still no agreed standards to guarantee the quality of your spa experience. The industry remains thinly regulated, with unsubstantiated claims being made for the health benefits of certain treatments, and an enormous variation in the quality of staff training.
The sector cannot even agree what constitutes a health spa: must it provide traditional water treatments, thought by the Romans to enhance health, or can the term more widely be applied to any treatment which claims to renew mind, body and spirit? Faced with such uncertainty, how can you know that your luxury break — whether a £2,000 week-long stay or an hour-long £32 facial — will offer the value, results and safety that you would expect? To Susan Harmsworth — one of the industry’s most influential voices after 35 years in the business — the current boom is not unalloyed good news for the consumer. “The vast majority now are jumping on the bandwagon. You can’t just throw together half a dozen treatment rooms and some heat experiences,” she says. “Some spas haven’t thought about the ‘journey’ the guest will experience.”
The huge architectural drawing splayed across her desk, her blueprint for the new Powerscourt Hotel in Ireland, offers a concrete definition of what Harmsworth, a youthful 60, understands by the spa visitor’s ‘journey’. Harmsworth, as the founder and chief executive of the spa consultancy Espa International, was called in to create the ultimate luxury spa over 3,500 square metres, which her team will then staff and manage for at least the first year.
“We define each space not simply in terms of size, but how it should feel, the emotions, the philosophy. You need to consider the nationality you’re catering for, whether you need separate-sex facilities, and how people work physiologically. Most people still don’t understand that taking a heat treatment, like a steam or a sauna, can offer a huge physiological benefit before a massage as it warms up your muscles. That’s what I mean about the journey.”
She pulls out a thick A4 guidebook — “we call it the Bible, but you’d better not write that” — which sets out in intricate detail the architects’ brief for the Powerscourt spa. With chapter headings such as “The Concept — Images and Emotions”, it specifies everything from the frequency of treatment-room air changes to the hidden spaces where umbrellas will be stored.There will be 20 soundproofed treatment rooms, as well as a main pool, smaller “vitality” pools, steam rooms and a mixed sauna. Much of the budget will go on ensuring constant temperature and air control. “We can’t have smell transfer,” Harmsworth explains.
And then, halfway through the build, comes the most critical part of the project, one which will swallow 50 per cent of the running costs: the recruitment and training of carefully selected staff. She says: “The reputable hotels will not use unqualified therapists, but I know of certain health farms that do. That’s really unethical — do you know how much harm that can cause?”.
There are currently about 60 bodies offering accreditation for those seeking to work as spa therapists in Britain. Formal training ranges from courses lasting just a few weeks to a two-year curriculum geared towards a National Vocational Qualification. Yet with no national regulation of the industry, recruitment standards are left to individual employers, as is the level of continuing workplace training. The recent spa-building boom has raised concerns that a shortage of better trained staff has led some employers to use relatively inexperienced therapists, some recruited from overseas. “The industry has to take much more responsibility for its clients’ wellness,” Harmsworth says.
“It’s quite dangerous to offer some treatments to people on medication. To the wrong person, even a sauna can push your heartrate up. Probably one in three people coming into a spa will have some sort of condition or be on medication, and a good spa will ask and will not treat you without a doctor’s permission,” adds Harmsworth. Yet although it is standard procedure for established spas to offer new visitors some sort of basic medical questionnaire, research conducted by Body&Soul suggests that therapists do not always make inquiries.
Hundreds of readers responded when Body&Soul invited your detailed verdicts on spas you had used in Britain and abroad. Your feedback, while generally positive about the quality of spas sampled, suggests a worrying lack of consistent policies for ascertaining guests’ health before treatments were applied. Readers who had visited 30 out of the 75 spas mentioned in your dispatches reported not having been asked whether they suffered from any allergies.
Guests at 18 sites, including British hotel and destination spas, claimed that their therapist had asked no questions about their health or medical history.
Roisin Isaacs, deputy chairman of the Spa Business Association, a 120-member trade body, disputes these claims, particularly those by readers who visited destination spas as opposed to hotel spas (Isaacs is co-owner of Ragdale Hall Health Hydro, in Leicestershire). “All spa treatments for a new client are preceded by a questionnaire of sorts, and the questions to ask are detailed in the therapists’ training,” she insists. “The difficulty we have is controlling the big growth sector, the hotels.”
After five years of intense growth, the association recognises the need for tighter self-regulation. It is now working with Visit Britain, the tourism authority, to develop the first nationally agreed requirements on the quality of services and training, due to launch next April.
Another uncertainty for customers is whether treatments — even if carried out to specified standards — actually offer any proven benefit. In a bid to differentiate themselves, spas have been offering increasingly exotic wraps and massages, often at prices not designed to enhance the serenity of one’s bank balance.
Food-based treatments have proved particularly fashionable: Pennyhill Park, Surrey, lists a “champagne foot soak”, and the Mardavall Hotel in Mallorca provides a caviar facial. “My biggest worry is treatments that don’t have a physiological benefit,” Harmsworth says. “Ayurvedic massage or shiatsu has huge value when done correctly, but at the moment you’ve got marketing people dreaming up gimmicky things that don’t actually do anything.”
Yet these specific concerns should not detract from the wider physical and psychological benefits most users — Body&Soul readers, at least — believe that they have gained from visiting high-end spas in Britain and abroad.
(The Times, March 25 2006)
posted by David Rowan at Saturday, March 25, 2006
<< Home