(This post has a Spanish version).
I have spent half my life working in luxury spas for some of the world's best hotel companies, starting my career as a therapist and later as a manager. Most places I've encountered were aesthetically pleasing and looked fantastic to the untrained eye, but in reality, they had serious design flaws leading to suboptimal results in terms of economics, internal efficiency, or customer experience. By the end of this post, you'll agree with me that all this information will help you maximize your profits and give your clients the best possible spa experience.
If you're planning to build a spa or are involved in an ongoing project, trust me: read this post carefully. Take your time. Take notes. The investment you are about to make in this content will be worth it: your vision on this matter will completely change (for the better) with this information. If you're an architect, you will learn a lot about spa design, but you will also understand why fitting the design into a broader framework will make your work, and the product you offer to your final client, much better and more valuable; if you're an investor or run a luxury hotel, you will begin to understand that there's something in all of this that has been eluding you until now and that you will really need.
The Basic Rules
General Rules:
- Designing the spa isn't the first step. You first need to define your business logic (needs, objectives, resources, relationship with the environment, type/origin of your clients, and much more). This leads to a complete spa plan; and only then, when your plan is defined, written, shared with the team, and agreed upon, can you start thinking about the design that will come later. At this moment, this initial phase can only be developed by someone who knows the spa's inner workings very well, as you'll soon understand why.
- So, if you're the director or owner of the company, your first investment, before designing anything, should be finding an experienced professional you can trust to lead this first part of the work cycle; and if you're an architect, you need someone who can handle the project definition (the business project) before your design team materializes it into a final concept.
- Steps: 1) know your clients: your specialist will do preliminary work to gather information on who they are in spa terms. 2) Once you've defined your demand, you choose your supply (decide which products and services you will offer). 3) Based on the supply, you decide what resources you need to provide it (infrastructure and equipment). 4) Now that you know exactly what elements will be in your center, it's time to start designing and distributing the space. And this is when the architecture team should join the development, understand the business logic defined by the spa specialist, and enrich the project with the best possible design.
- "I was at a spa in Thailand where they had...". Imagine you're building a specialized Neurology hospital. Would you spend your money on an orthopedics service because you saw it in another hospital that was for Traumatology? Each center needs its own plan, and each idea makes sense or not depending on how it fits into the plan. Later, I'll give real examples of unproductive investments and a lot of money lost because someone came back from Thailand with happy ideas.
- Recommendation: the best spa designer is the future spa manager, or if that's not possible, at least someone compatible or someone who deeply understands the project (maybe the designer can help you hire your staff later?). Even if you know the business, you might have a concept in mind and design the spa based on it... And perhaps later, the new manager will work with a totally different idea. Each piece of the machine must push in the same direction: concept, design, image, services, daily operations, everything.
Specific Rules:
- The spa is designed from the client's experience, not from a visual idea. You can't say "I want this here because it looks nice, or because I saw another spa that has it": you must ask yourself "when the client is doing this, what will they need? What will they be thinking? What will they see, hear, smell?" And then you design based on the answers to those questions.
- As a consequence: separate noise and silence zones (see noise scheme examples below). Showers, water areas, locker rooms, areas where people gather and talk, the hair salon, the gym... All areas where there isn't strict silence must be completely isolated from treatment rooms, the relaxation area of the sauna, etc. A client receiving a massage should hear NOTHING except ambient music; if there are two people talking on the other side of the door, even if it's quietly, in that state of relaxation, it will be heard and will ruin their spa experience.
- Another consequence, separate workers from clients. The client is experiencing a moment of relaxation, a transcendent moment; if you're in that special state enjoying the silence after an expensive and fantastic treatment, you don't want to see a maintenance technician passing by to fix a machine, someone carrying used towels, or anyone who might snap you out of that trance. Figure out how to manage it, but separate the "noble" areas from the work zones.
A spa is a highly specialized center that needs to be designed by a specialist who knows its dynamics inside out; and this specifically excludes architects, who constantly perpetrate abominations after which they cash their check and vanish to add another spa (pretty but deficient) to their portfolio and fool the next investor. I've seen countless times in my career that the spa manager is hired when it's already too late, and all they can do is lie to their bosses and say everything is perfect because no one ever got a job by giving their employer bad news.
Why You Need Control Over Your Spa
In short: if you run a hotel with a spa, or you're an investor and a spa is part of your assets, you're probably losing money, and no one wants to tell you.
I could name world-renowned companies and super-luxury brands because this happens everywhere. I've seen a Leading Hotel Of The World with a fully equipped treatment booth that can't be used because the prestigious German architecture firm that designed the spa decided to place it next to the hair salon, and the noise from the dryers is unbearable. I've seen a Wellness Center in one of the top-3 chains in the world, with two incredibly expensive facilities now used as towel storage. I've seen the spectacular wellness of a super-luxury hotel where there are no showers in the treatment rooms, so every time a client gets a package involving "dirty" treatments (peeling, algae, mud), they have to leave the room half-naked, cross the relaxation area in front of everyone, enter special rooms that do have showers, and return half-naked again to continue their series of treatments. And by the way, in this last case, the floor is made of a special stone where some products and oils leave permanent marks if left to dry; so they've had to bring in a cleaner who is constantly scrubbing while clients relax on their loungers. And in these examples, I've only talked about design or infrastructure failures, not even mentioning management.
Throughout my career, I've seen it all, but what I haven't seen is a hotel manager (let alone a hotel executive or owner) who truly knows what's happening in their spa. A spa is an artificial appendage that in recent years has been added to hotel complexes because everyone has one and they must have one, but in reality, no one outside the Wellness department has any idea how they work or how to distinguish what's good from what's bad; so the management only cares that the clients are happy and that the center makes a profit, that the Excel arrows point upwards and the KPIs satisfy the shareholders.
But this is a problem because, although it's true there are problems without solutions where it's better to focus on how to coexist optimally with them, there are others that could at least be partially fixed if planned for. And of course, any future renovation or investment, well or poorly done, can mean money gained or lost, although only the staff working there every day really knows how much could have been gained or lost.
A Real Example
The case I'm going to show next is that of a small wellness center in a 5-star hotel from a worldwide-known chain. I visited it during construction, told everyone at the hotel it was a disaster and they needed to stop and redesign, they told me the work had already begun and couldn't be changed, and here's how it stands now:
There's no need for a full analysis to understand that something's not right. Just look at the noise scheme:
The areas where there should be silence are surrounded by noisy zones, which (as you will see shortly) costs the property money.
But noise isn't the worst part. Look at what happens when a client comes for their massage appointment:
According to the day, therapists choose between one of these two options: either they lead the client through the sauna (where people are trying to relax naked), or they have to cross the hair salon, manicure and pedicure area, enter the Vichy room, exit into the hallway, and then reach the massage room.
And this is what happens when someone from the gym or coming from the pool wants to use the bathroom:
I hadn't mentioned that only three loungers fit in the relaxation area (so if there are more than three people in the sauna, the rest don't even have a place to sit); but these three lucky ones and those entering and leaving the saunas naked have to see people crossing there all the time.
Complaints in this wellness center are constant, and almost no one goes twice. After the first year, the management contacted me (because I was the one who had predicted what would happen) and we had a meeting, and they asked me for a solution that could be implemented with minimal time and money investment.
Considering this is not the design I would have created from scratch, here's what I proposed given the circumstances:
The improvement is evident even to non-specialists, so there's not much more to comment on. I will just add a separate note to explain why my design removed the "Vichy room": the truth is, nobody was using it because after making the investment, the clients simply had no interest in this treatment. No one thought about this before construction, and when I predicted it, it was too late.
Designing from Scratch
This last section is just an extra for spa designers. It's not necessary to understand the main ideas of the post, and if you don't need to design, you can stop reading here.
Some time ago, the owners of a resort asked me for ideas to build a wellness area for their guests. I did my preliminary study and finally offered them three alternatives based on different business concepts: the first focused on pure quality (adding value to the hotel's brand and bringing indirect benefits), the second a mix, and the third prioritizing direct economic benefit. What I'm going to show you below are some sketches I made for this third option: this is not the project itself by any means, but images I used in my presentation to explain the concept.
This resort is in a coastal area, separated from urban zones that offer services and entertainment, but it is surrounded by many apartment complexes (without services and entertainment). Stays at both the resort and surrounding apartments range from 7 to 15 days, so here we have a significant group of people who, during their vacation, will always have a couple of days with nothing special to do. So, in this third concept, I capitalized on this idea by creating a spa that would absorb business from the entire area, serving as an attraction for the resort's clients as well as a magnet for the neighbors. In my presentation, I also mentioned that this opened the possibility of expanding the idea by creating adjacent leisure and dining facilities, although that was just a suggestion outside my area of expertise.
The idea you'll see next utilizes an existing sports area separate from the resort's main building. This area is at the edge of the hotel closest to the coast: this side of the complex is bordered by a promenade, beyond which is the sea.
In my concept, the sports area does not disappear; it just moves up one level: it would be on the roof of the new spa. This new spa would have two levels: one at street level (with two entrances: one internal for hotel guests and one external for area residents) and another in the basement.
On the first floor would be the reception, common-use facilities, and a relaxation area separated from the noise. Everything is designed to operate with the minimum staff while maintaining maximum quality, thus saving on personnel costs without sacrificing the standard at all.
A detail to note: if you look back at the towel containers, you should know that these are connected to the basement level: when a client leaves their towels in the container, they fall directly into a service area. The collection is quick and efficient for staff, reducing inconvenience for clients who are enjoying their luxury time and do not want to see workers passing by with dirty towels.
The basement level serves two completely separate functions: on one hand, individual therapies and treatments with their respective areas for rest and silence, and on the other, all the machinery and work areas with the emergency zone. When technical operations or internal work are necessary, everything can be done without disrupting the client experience.
Note from the future: I published this post years ago and since then I've received many inquiries from around the world, from four types of professionals: architects, hotel industry professionals, investors, and spa professionals. I appreciate everyone's interest and remind you that I am a busy person and can only respond to your questions in my free time, so when you contact me, please be patient and do not insist. I usually reply to all my readers; if I can give any advice, I will do so when possible.
