The rise of wellness resorts: how millennials are embracing holistic luxury getaways
From One&Only’s partnership with Chenot to Clinique La Prairie’s popular week-long well-being experiences, today’s luxury getaways increasingly combine health and leisure
Today’s travellers are not just looking for experiences – they are looking for transformational experiences that are so powerful they affect the rest of their lives. It is these extremely high expectations that Alejandro Bataller, vice-president of Sha Wellness Clinic, says he is catering to in this chic property on Spain’s east coast. Sha is one of a growing number of medical wellness resorts around the world that blur the line between a clinic and a hotel.
“These old definitions no longer apply; at Sha you can achieve the results you expect from a top wellness clinic while feeling you’re in a luxury holiday resort,” he says. “Years ago the ‘wellness consumer’ was perceived as someone with a lot of free time. Today, this has completely changed. Most wellness consumers are decision-makers. Our audience has very limited time – and time has become much more valuable than money. We don’t want our guests to have to decide between dedicating time to their health or pleasure any more.”
Years ago the ‘wellness consumer’ was perceived as someone with a lot of free time. Today, this has completely changed. Most wellness consumers are decision-makers
The idea of wellness holidays used to bring to mind spa retreats with yoga programmes, but resorts around the world are now bridging health and leisure in ways that are more scientific and medically inclined than ever – at no sacrifice to luxury and leisure.
The newer the hotel or programme, the more medical its approach tends to be. One of the pioneers in the business, The Farm at San Benito, for example, takes a softer route that is nevertheless still a step up from a spa resort. The retreat is set in lush green jungle in the Philippines and features 33 suites and villas, along with an award-winning spa and wellness centre offering programmes for revitalisation, stress reduction, pain management and non-invasive alternatives to cosmetic surgery.
Meanwhile, the new Six Senses Kaplankaya on Turkey’s Aegean coast is the most extensive and advanced within the Six Senses portfolio, and offers full body screening with Bod Pod machines used by Nasa to accurately calculate body density and fat. Its 10,000 square metre wellness facilities include a Holistic Anti-Ageing Centre led by a renowned neuroscientist, and a Watsu pool for floating meditation, along with 20 treatment rooms for a huge range of wellness programmes.
Sha also takes a more medical approach. Guests can sign up for any of its 12 health programmes, each of which can be tailored to individual health levels and goals. But unlike checking in to a spa retreat, which traditionally offers massages, healthy eating and activities such as meditation classes, Sha’s programmes offer these plus tests such as live blood analysis (which some alternative medicine practitioners believe can diagnose toxins in the body), and analysing the length of telomeres, the protective caps on chromosomes that wear away with age.
The clinic also offers treatments such as transcranial current stimulation and brain photobiomodulation, pioneering Nasa and Harvard University technology that involves wearing a soft, state-of-the-art helmet that sends low-intensity currents and infrared light to different areas of the brain to improve cognitive capacities.
The clinic’s sleep recovery programme includes a polygraph to diagnose sleep patterns, nutritionist and general medical consultations, and psychotherapy, meditation and anti-stress sessions, among others. Between activities, there is free time to relax on the loungers under the palm trees lining the minimalist infinity pool, or do some sightseeing in nearby Valencia.