An independent CAlifornia-based planner, Marci DuBois, had to go through the hassle of finding a new venue in Hawaii to host her incentive group, since her first-choice venue claimed it had a spa, though it was actually a poor excuse for one. "This one resort had everything going for itself: right location, nice rooms, and a spa," says DuBois. During her site selection, however, she visited the spa and was most unimpressed. "I said to them, 'Hopefully you'll be doing more to this before my program' and they responded 'no.' It was a shame, because this property would have been perfect. I had to look, once again, at all the different properties in Hawaii." Obviously she found another property, but it became a long, tedious project. "What's funny now is that my first-choice resort is now in the midst of upgrading that spa," adds DuBois.
As the pastime of "spahhing" becomes a healthy trend, planners find it a must when organizing a meeting or incentive that a day at the spa is scheduled for attendees. The availability of spas often makes or breaks the decision when choosing a facility for meetings. Soon, though, spa treatments won't be enough -- there's a new pampering trend on the horizon that treats the inside of the body as well as the outside.
The Essence of Well-Being
The new buzzword in the spa business this year is "wellness center." Wellness centers, like spas, help people restore balance, and rejuvenate and invigorate the body, mind, and spirit. But spas and wellness centers offer a safe haven for people to let go and lose themselves in a nurturing environment where pampering and relaxation are promoted. However, there is a difference between the two: While spas and wellness centers both promote a healthy and relaxing environment, wellness centers focus on a person's overall well-being. They offer a more holistic approach where more amenities are offered to help people become more aware of their health. Programs like yoga, meditation, tai chi, and tai box, are incorporated in the treatments, along with consultation on nutrition, heart health, blood pressure, body fat, and stress management.
ISPA's (International Spa Association) Web site, www.ispa.com, notes that the latest trends in the spa industry are wellness centers that offer a "one-stop shopping" experience. "From pampering to counseling, from a manicure that's practically a work of art to deeply spiritual encounters that change your relationship to the world around you, the new spa experience can take care of your needs completely," the site says. John DeFontes, spa director for the Centre of Well-Being at The Phoenician in Phoenix, AZ, says, "Guests require resort spas to have the total spa experience where all services, like fitness programs, salon services, and massages, are included within the spa and wellness center."
Targeting Their Inner Selves
"There is a greater percentage of meeting guests who wish to include wellness programs in their meeting retreat. We offer programs like Yoga Wellness for meeting groups that have become well attended," says DeFontes. On staff at the Centre, there are specialists in yoga, Pilates, meditation, nutrition, acupuncture, and even astrology, tarot card reading, and hypnotherapy.
Donna Sampson, sales and marketing manager for the Centre adds, "It used to be that groups were participating in massages and facials only, but now we're seeing groups with bigger interest in a wider range of services. We did an event, a spa fair, called Circle of Well-Being for a group recently. It was an afternoon spouse program of 140 men and women during a financial firm's meeting. We had chair massages, foot massages, mini meditation classes, mini Pilates classes, brief tarot readings, astrology readings, makeup application, and polish changes for hands and feet. We even created a peppermint foot treatment for them and finished the day with a salsa dance class." The Centre also offers a signature treatment called "acussage" -- a combination of acupuncture and massage. Sampson has found that a lot of VIPs within groups utilize this treatment.
All in all, what makes wellness centers a benefit is that they offer more than just the regular spa treatments like body scrubs and wraps, massages, and facials. "You can only do so many of the off-site activities -- after a while, they tend to be the same no matter where you go," says an independent planner in Orange County, CA, who holds a biannual meeting for a large financial group based in New York City at The Phoenician, with about 400 people in attendance. "You can do four-wheel drives in the desert or river rafting; you can also do a spa wherever you go, too. But it's the quality of a spa that makes you want to keep you going back there. You got to give these high-end clients a place where they feel really special."
"We had a few people choose 'out of the box' treatments like reflexology and acussage, but the majority go for body scrubs, aromatherapy treatments, massages, and manicures," says the planner. "On occasion you have someone who tries something a little unusual, like a consultation on nutrition. Whatever they want to do, we let them do."
It seems that wellness center treatments are on the cusp of becoming a new fad. Luckily, there are myriad wellness centers out there that have been around for a while, like La Costa's Chopra Center in Carlsbad, CA, and Cooper Wellness Program in Dallas, TX, to name a few. Dr. Neil Treister jumped onto this emerging trend by creating Salus Heart and Wellness in 2001 in Rancho Bernardo, CA. "Our programs are designed for business groups who have come for a meeting at the Rancho Bernardo Inn [on site] and who look to integrate life-balance activities in with their meeting," says Treister. "Within the last month, we did a two-hour stress management program with 40 people from a trucking brokerage company. At the end of their meeting, they wanted something that was different, so we did a heart-healthy, pre-meal snack event where we talked about the various kinds of foods and also about stress management. We have also done spouse programs, so while attendees are in a meeting, spouses learn meditation or yoga, or get information on heart disease, or whatever other topics they want."