If you plan to build a spa or are involved on a project in development, trust me on this: you need to read this post, and read it carefully. Take your time. Take notes. The time you are about to invest with this content will be worth it: your vision of this topic will totally change (improve) after this information. If you are an architect you will learn a lot about spa design, but also you will understand why embedding the design itself in a broader framework will make your work and the final product you will offer to your client much better and valuable.
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Side note: since there is a lot of information condensed here and I know it's difficult to grasp everything at once, I have made a short version in blue with the ground ideas so you can initially read only that and maybe go with the deep details later; this will help you not only to get the spa basics but also to understand how to recognize a good spa manager when you need to hire one and know which are the correct questions to ask. Anyway, if after all this there's something unclear or you want to talk about your project, feel free to contact me.
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General rules:- Designing the spa is not the first step. First you need to define your internal business logic (needs, goals, resources, relationship with the environment, clients type/origin and much more), this leads to a full spa plan, and only then, once you have your plan defined, written, shared with the team and agreed, is when you start thinking about design. This first phase can only be developed by someone who knows very well the spa life from the inside.
- So, if you are the company director/owner, your very first investment (before designing) should be finding an experienced and reliable specialist to lead this first part of the workflow; and if you are an architect you need someone who will take care of the project definition before your design team steps in to transform this into a real concept. Your specialist will end with a full dossier that will explain how and why to invest on some things and not others, and this will save you a lot of otherwise wasted money. In the future a rational and optimized concept (idea + design + daily develop) will bring lower costs and much higher incomes. The most common mistake by the companies management is hiring an architect to design their spa based on nothing (just beauty or image), and when the specialist comes in the mistakes can not be unmade; this post will hopefully help you understand why you have a better way in order to get the best from your future spa.
- Steps sequence: 1) you know your clients: your specialist will do a previous full research to know who they are and what they want in terms of spa. 2) Once you know the demand, you select your offer (you decide which products and services you'll give). 3) Based on the offer, you decide the facilities you'll have in your spa: which resources do you need, in order to provide the best way those services and products your clients will want? 4) Now you know the elements you will have, this is the moment to start designing the space placing them here and there... And this is the right moment for the architect to join the development, understand the business logic given by the spa specialist, and enrich the project with the best environment design. Please take your time to read this paragraph again as many times as you need, to understand what a "healthy" spa creation workflow is and why.
- Real life usecase: "I saw this thing in that spa in Thailand...". Suppose you are building a neurology hospital. Would you spend your money on a super expensive knee rehab unit because you saw it in another hospital? First you know your patients (people with brain problems), then you decide which treatments they want and what you will offer them (brain scanning, brain surgery), then you decide which equipments you will need (scanners, surgery rooms) and how many people will be in your hospital, then you start thinking about the best design to make all those elements work well. And of course you don't do this on your own: first you talk to an experienced neurologist, an experienced nurse, an experienced manager... Everything said here is pretty obvious, but for some reason this logical and professional workflow is not the rule but the exception in the spa design sector. And this explains the disastrous results I've seen so often in my career.
- Suggestion: the best spa designer is the future spa manager, or if it's not possible at least someone compatible, or someone who deeply understands the project (maybe the designer can help you hire your spa staff later?). Even if you know the business, you can have a concept in mind and design the spa based on it... And maybe the new guy will work with a totally different idea. Each piece of the machine should work towards the same direction: concept, design, image, services, daily work, everything.
Specific rules:- The spa design is based on the client experience, not the environment look. You don't say "I want this here because it looks beautiful", or "that other spa had it so I want it too": you have to ask yourself "when the client is here doing this, what will they need? Exactly how and when? What will they be thinking? What will they feel, hear, smell? And then, based on the answers to those questions, you start planning (and later designing) everything.
- As a consequence of that, isolate the noise areas from the silence areas (see the noise schemes examples later). Hairdresser, gym, showers, lockers rooms... Places where people talk or don't care about being noisy should be totally isolated from the sauna relax area, massage rooms and so on. A client receiving a massage must hear only the relax ambient music, not people talking at the other side of the door.
- Another consecuence: isolate the clients from the staff. Your client is living a relax experience, a peaceful moment after their treatment or just feels away of this world. They don't want to see a tech support worker passing through, or a guy carrying a bunch of used towels. Find the way to design your spa making a separation between the "noble" and the service areas.
In short: if you haven't spent many years working on a spa, start by finding somebody who did. Let them complete all the previous research and preparation and, once the business logic is set, the needs and resources are defined and the idea is clear, then call a trusted architect to start the design according to the plan so you will be sure that everybody in the team will work towards the same goals. The ideal would be hiring a "luxury spas creation team" already having with these different profiles, and which would do everything for you from scratch to the public opening (planning, designing, products, hiring, staff training and so on); but since this is quite difficult to find at top international level, at least you can use the information contained in this post to get the closest to that optimal model.
And now here you have the full post:
The right planning and design workflowUnfortunately it's very common to find that many luxury hotels wellness have been conceived by people who have absolutely no idea about this business (normally architects, the hotel owners who have an idea they saw in their last holidays in Thailand, or a spa professional not enough qualified). When they hire the real specialist, they come and find part of all the center is already designed or builded, and it's too late to take everything down and re-create it with actual professional criteria. I have dozens of times talked to managers who told me something like "well, I wanted the job and I couldn't change the past, so I said everything was great and accepted this was it and the only way to go was making the best out of it".
This has further effects on the product quality offered to the client; it's much worse than it could have been if things were thought by the spa specialist. They are the only one who know the market and their clients, know exactly what the clients want to have and what don't -saving wasted money in unuseful investments, later come some examples about this-, how to orgenize everything to make it work with the best quality and the less staff needed, and how to use their aknowledge and experience to connect the company goals and the users requests.
This would be the correct sequence:
1) The ownership (or hotel managers if that's the case) contacts the specialist and tell him their company targets: (what they want, specifically from this center and combined to the global company targets). Later I'll give a very clear real example of why this is fundamental and has a decisive influence on how the spa must be designed and builded.
2) The specialists does a previous research about the main important aspects. For example: what kind of clients will be the potential users (nationalities, ages, economic or social level, their uses or experience about spa services and so on), the environment (is the center in the middle of a city or lost in the desert? Is there any nearby competition? Is there any other leisure or health offer available?), the eventual integration with other hotel or complex services, etc. As a conclusion to this research the specialist will select the spa model that fits exactly its conditions: there are basically four main spa types (hydrotherapy/thalassotherapy, sport center, threatments wellness and activities/leisure center) but normally the expert combines different elements from each one to find the perfect balance. Then they share the results of this research to their bosses for their approvement.
3) Based on all these conclusions, the specialist select the needed facilities to meet a) the company target, b) what the clients want having in mind what they don't want, c) the center operational conditions, and d) as a consecuence of the previous info, which spa model goes in this case. If in this selection there are facilities clients would want if they were there, the offer quality is lower than it should and this is the specialist's mistake; if there are facilities or services offered but not demanded, it's their mistake too. For example: the english tourists love the steamroom and colors showers and threatments like reflexology and hot stones are very popular among them, then if you are focused on this public you want your design (spa design and massage rooms design) to be optimized for services like these; however, the scandinavic tourists are mainly interested on deep muscle massage and finnish sauna and if you give them other services they don't want to use them, so the design and features you want for your spa should be totally different. Noone else than the qualified and experienced professional know all these things and know their clients.
4) Once the ideas are clear and it's known what and how the center must have, the architect steps in. Based on the business logic (consecuence of the specialist' job), they will add the quality touch creating the architectonic piece offering the best creative and technical solutions to the expert's requierements. This is by the way a great way (the only way) for an architect to actually learn how to design a spa, getting the real life information from the person who will do the real life daily work there.
5) We have started with the right concept, based on it an optimized designed has been made, and it's the moment to build the spa and give it the correct equipment (specialist's work too). Since this moment there's no need to invent anything else, if the previous work has been done well now we just have to follow the plan.
Coming to this point I don't think I need to explain the quality of a wellness center is not based on spectacular facilities, much luxury in decoration and so on. The effect details are good to impress the visitor and make him talk his friends at home about how beautiful the place was; this is good on the surface, but the really important is this:
So how is the perfect spa?
- From the client point of view: their spa experience must be "top", since they are at home looking for information about the center until they come back home and reccomend it to their friends (and maybe later if they receive information or news of their interest, in case they indicated so). This includes of course the beauty of the place, but that's only one of the aspects that "make the magic" together to others like the human team, the public attention, the center management, the available services and threatments, the products quality, etc.
- From the company point of view: the spa is just a tool among others, to follow the company strategies and reach their goals whatever they are; then the perfect spa is the one that does this in the best and most efficient way. Also it's necessary that the required investment to be the lowest possible, in design and building (you need the facilities you need, no more and no less) and later in staff (the less people are needed to get the same or more, the better; and a good design saves people), to reach the best possible quality level. Each cent spent unnecesarily is a stolen cent to the company owners.
This case that comes next actually exists, it's a small 5* hotel. The wellness area was designed and builded under the architect's direction, who of course had no idea about the spa work and knows nothing at all about this business as you will see (and by what the information I have, he refused any expert assistance). As a consecuence of the unprofessionality of the involved people the center was a total disaster, the clients' complaints were daily despite the workers effort (complaints that don't reach the architect, of course) and the damage in image and money lost was enormeous.
A real example: how to design BAD a spa, and how to fix it
I can't explain the entire list of very big mistakes of this design and don't want to reveal any information about the company; so I'll just focus on a few details and you'll have to trust me for the rest. Let's see the distribution:
(Click on any of this post's images to enlarge)
As you can see there are two entrance/exits, with the reception desk in the middle of them (with an open kitchen behind! So the clients see the workers eating or washing the dishes) and from this area we have the accesses to the gym, to the sauna/relax/jacuzzi zone, and to the hairdresser zone and crossing it to other facilities. At the relax zone there are 3 relax beds to rest (which means, when there are four or more people there only the first three can seat, the rest must stand on their feet) and a small space for the clients joy. On the other hand there are much wasted space, for the changing/rest rooms -infraused, not enough people to fill them- and a "vichy room" which is a kind of massage that requires an specific infraestructure and can't be used for anything else; the kind of client that visits this hotel is not interested at all on such a thing and the vichy facility is used just 1-2 hours per month and the rest of the time is empty. The space is limited, bad distributed and has a big part wasted, and they have spend (and lost) money in unuseful things.
Do you remember what I said before about the client's experience? The FIRST one has to have in mind when designs a spa is that the users enjoy the most, and it's super important to create a quiet and tranquility ambient in the relax zones. Let's see the noise map for this wellness:
You see: this is nonsense, and any just minimum qualified specialist would have pointed it in case they would have looked for professional advice since the beginning. This center received lots of clients complaints, who for example were at the relax zone -not physically separated from the rest- hearing the jacuzzi and showers noise, the gym machines, the people talking at the reception and the hairdresser's hairdriers. In this design the jacuzzi and saunas machines -very noisy- are located right in front of one of the massage rooms and the clients get their threatments hearing much noise; and in the other rooms you could be receiving your threatment hearing someone singing under the shower at the changing rooms (literally, no metaphore). But this is not the only mistake, let's see what happens has an appointment for a threatment and is leaded to the massage room:
There are two options: crossing through the sauna and relax areas (more complaints) or through the hairdresser, the manicure and pedicure, entering into the vichy room, getting out again to the lobby, and finally to the massage room. Same happens when a client, a gym user or anyone else asks for the restrooms:
As I've have said this is a real example I've seen with my own eyes in my professional career. I got the task to repair this mess, with some limits and spending as less money as possible. I didn't have total freedom to do what I thought necessary for this hotel level, but my design was an obvious improvement:
This is indeed something better, isn't it? The sauna gets some privacy, the vichy waste is removed, the changing rooms are sized just as needed and there are more space for other important facilities (bigger threatments rooms with shower, more relax beds and space there, a waiting area, etc) and the ways from anywhere to anywhere have more logic. This is a professional spa design.
The 5 stars spa designThe following information is just a little example extracted from a project I've done for a client, owner of a luxury hotel. The total dossier content is very complete and includes all kind of economic and strategic analysis, etc, specific for the spa and integrating it on the whole company and on future projects; of course all this includes company info I can't write about, so here I'll just include some images of the 3D first draft I've created to make a full representation and let my client understand the idea and see how it could actually look (this is very generic and far from accuracy, created without specific architecture tools, and it's impossible to do more without the right resources; so please take it just as an orientation I share with you to help you learn how to conceive a spa).
Do you remember when I told you the company targets fundamentally define how must the center design be? Of course in every wellness center you have to get the best quality possible and the highest economic benefits, but there are always priorities and sometimes -like in this next case- there are other factors to consider. In some spas the first target is to get money directly, and everything else must addapt to this; in some others, for example luxury hotels, a part of the profit gets sacrifized in order to reach higher targets like the hotel image to the client. In the project I'm showing you now the hotel owner (located on a holidays place) has some specific needs because his business here is double: he sells appartments/suites to people who want to buy them as an investment or holidays residence, and in the time they are not using them the hotel rent these appartments for its guests. Then we have on one hand the hotel business, and on the other the builder business who wants his property to have the highest value to sell it successfully. We are talking about a luxury place, the price of each appartment comes to 2.5 millions euros.
So all the complex (and the spa as a part of it) must be oriented to the general target: reach the 5* hotel level, and help to bring high level people from the surrounding area and convince the potential buyers to spend several millions euros investing on the appartments. The owner doesn't want the spa manager to decrease a bit the quality and gets a couple of thousands euros more here and there, that's "little money" compared to the "big money" is in his other business.
This spa design and everything related (the visual language -colors, staff clothes-, construction materials, the offer for the public, the organization, everything) has been conceived to attract the high level people around and contribute to the global company strategy to make this hotel complex the main social reference in the area, and make the company brand image stronger giving it a luxury reference position. There are in the project many other aspects like high level health and beauty product lines connecting them to the hotel name, exclusivity strategies in the spa marketing, etc; and tecnically I've included innovations like a electromagnets-based sauna doors security system (I designed it for this project), special threatment rooms doors second-locks to avoid interruptions for the clients, a towels collection and storage system better for the clients and needs less people to manage it (saving salaries for the company)... Each wardrobe depth is calculated to help the workers take everything the easiest way, the electric plugs are located exactly where the therapist will need them, the wall angles are thought to let the clients see only the "noble" beautiful areas and not the service spaces, etc. There's nothing random, every little detail leads to our goals.
But let's go to the design part and the 3D draft, which is what I wanted to show you. The hotel site is surrounded by a promenade (and a little bit more elevated than it); in one corner of this site there's a depressed land (the same level than the promenade) where they have located the tennis space. My proposal is rising this tennis area to the level of the rest of the hotel complex, and under this tennis placing the spa in two levels: the ground floor at the promenade level, and under it a basement.
In the ground floor there will be the reception and the main common facilities including a relax zone. All is adapted to the kind of clients and area residents, with their characteristics and preferences, and some services have been discarded because they could have demand among other public but not for this one. (Note: as I've said the 3D representation is just a basic non accurate draft; about the colors, following the hotel style the walls and floor would be marble white and all the furnishing and equipments in chocolate brown, with a very minimalistic design).
To protect the clients privacy all the windows and glass walls to the outside, including the glass pannel between the reception and the pool, should be in glass bricks or plain translucid glass.
The service area has been thought to have the minimum staff to offer the best the best quality service, and make the daily work optimal, fluent, easy and efficient.
The basement is used for the individual threatments; there is also a machinery/service part separated from the rest by a wide lobby that can be used as a handicapped people access, access to the service zones for the technical and support staff, and emergency exit.
And we are finally coming to the end of this post. I think all this information will help you 1) if you are in the spa business and want to learn about the design specific topic, 2) if you own a place and want to build a top level spa there (or find a good manager, now you know how to make the right questions), or 3) if you are an architect and have been hired to design it.
There are a million more details to talk about, but it's impossible to cover everything in just a post; anyway, this is a good starting point and if you need more feel free to contact me if you want to talk about your project.
