In the busy 21st Century many people are looking for more than just somewhere to stay when booking their hotel- 95% of conference bookings specify that there should be a swimming pool in a conference hotel even though surveys show only 7% of delegates will be using the facility, for example. Resorts provide one vacation experience usually tied to a beach or other facility such as championship golf courses, whilst the Spa is emerging as a central part of the experience for other types of vacationer and weekender.

Spas are often sited an easy drive from city complexes, such as Radisson’s new Spa in Bük in Hungary, just an hour from Vienna, or Wales’s Celtic Manor Resort, just over an hour and a quarter from London’s Heathrow airport. Whilst these two are major spa centres as well as golf resorts (the Celtic Manor is in our Review archive, Bük will be reviewed shortly) many smaller hotels are adding spas to build on added attractions to their bedrooms and restaurants.

An example of this is the work being undertaken at the Grenzgasthaus Neuhausl in the Berchtesgaden National Park, just over the border in Germany from the Austrian city of Salzburg. With all year around attractions ranging from deer in the woods at the back of the hotel to skiing in the winter, from the nearby ‘Eagles Nest’ or Kehlsteinhaus to the lakes and mountains of the National Park itself this hotel has been steadily expanded year on year by the owning family.

The latest extension adds an indoor swimming pool and Spa including two types of sauna, massage rooms, sun beds and beauty treatment as well as six apartments. Recent work has also seen the extension and refurbishment of the Restaurant. All this is within the envelope of a traditional vernacular Bavarian Gasthaus, extending an already popular hotel and enlarging the range of activities available to the guests.

For those hoteliers or their designers pondering the addition of this kind of facility, let me point to the experience of the UK’s Chester Grosvenor, who gave up some bedrooms to create a spa and treatment rooms – and have seen a 20% lift in bookings since the completion of the project. The addition of a Spa is an option not just for the large five star either – Gasthaus Neuhausl is a small family three-star hotel, albeit with standards of interior space and quality that would embarrass the three star hotels elsewhere in Europe – incidentally pointing up the lack of harmonisation of star rating standards previously commented on here. Such Spas are also quite common amongst three star hotels in this region of Europe.

Spa holidays are the latest area to attract the attention of those seeking to unwind and deal with the stresses of modern life – but such guests are discerning and will return for further treatments only if the hotel facilities and service offer the right level of both luxury and therapy. Spas can take many forms, and over the next few months I will look at the criteria they should meet and the design criteria that need to be deployed to ensure that the chosen solution works effectively both for hotel, the guest and the spa therapists.