hospitalitystyle.com

(Summer 2010) posted on Thu Jun 10, 2010 EDT

Spas are massaging their environments to cater to today’s cost-conscious, eco-oriented and health-minded consumers. Here are three good examples.

Tweet

By Matthew Hall

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Oh, the irony: These are stressful times for many spa operators. Their businesses are being buffeted by a variety of economic and demographic forces, including a customer mindset that's shifted from “conspicuous consumption” to “conscientious consumption”; an increased demand for prevention-focused health regimes rather than plain old pampering; and an ever-growing number of environmentally aware Millennials coming through their doors.

All those factors are causing spas to make over their service menus as well as their designs. What follows is a look at three new hotel-based spas that put a new face on spaces that pamper.

First up is the Qin Spa at the Four Seasons Hotel Shanghai, where designers from HBA created an “elegant, timeless destination” in the heart of that frenetic Asian city by artfully mixing artifacts from old Shanghai with contemporary furnishings. Next is the Mountain Health Spa at the Royal Spa Kitzbühel Hotel in the Alps. The vision of Schletterer Wellness & Spa Design, this haven reflects one of the hottest trends in the industry: the “hybrid spa” experience, where exercise and fitness activities play a central role. Finally, at the spa housed within the Bardessono boutique inn in California's Napa Valley, WATG and Powell Padham Martin-Vegue adopted a “let the sun shine in” philosophy that takes the notion of an eco-chic retreat to a whole new level.

QIN SPA

Located on the fourth floor of the 37-story Four Seasons Hotel Shanghai, the 8,200-sq.-ft. Qin Spa was conceived as a “contemporary urban retreat,” says Connie Puar, the principal at HBA's Singapore office in charge of the project. “The design fuses traditional and contemporary touches with the art, science and theater of centuries-old Chinese medicinal practices to create an environment that's both calming and inspirational,” Puar says.

That traditional/modern fusion is on prominent display in the spa's reception space. Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling lacquered doors made of aged elm wood evoke the imperial palace doors common in early Chinese dynasties. Counterbalancing that ancient touch is a variety of contemporary Chinese furniture.

The spa's nine treatment rooms are themed affairs, with each taking on a unique character/color scheme based on the I Ching (sky, earth, water, etc.), accompanied by individual, themed medicinal ingredients, including rose hip, ginseng and lilac. The material palette includes ash wood, honed granite and stained bamboo.

Those design ingredients blend into a destination that Puar describes as “unique in the market”—no mean feat in a sophisticated city that's home to legions of luxury hotels and their equally opulent spas.