The spa industry mixes time-honored practices and rituals with cutting-edge applications. Assessing their top five expectations for the spa industry in 2009 are Ingo Schweder, Managing Director, and Brad Fixler, Chief Marketing Officer of Bangkok-based Spatality International. Pictured: Bliss Spa at W Hotel Doha, Quatar — Photo by HYB

The spa industry mixes time-honored practices and rituals with cutting-edge applications. Assessing their top five expectations for the spa industry in 2009 are Ingo Schweder, Managing Director, and Brad Fixler, Chief Marketing Officer of Bangkok-based Spatality International. Rooted in ancient traditions and long-established regional customs, the practice of spa is centuries old, yet the spa industry is relatively young. The industry’s noticeable growth of the past two decades finds it caught, not unpleasantly, in the inexorable yin-yang of the time-honored practices that have nothing to do with financial models and profit, and of, well, financial models and profit. It’s this juxtaposition that’s truly fascinating; it’s also what makes predicting trends in the spa business a worthy exercise. An exercise that beckons us to view the potential on the horizon while gently reminding us why Salus Per Aquam (“health through water”) exists in the first place. With this in mind, here are five trends we expect to see in 2009.

James HOTEL Yearbook
Publisher
+41 21 784 3303
HYB

Related