It had been a long week. A long month. A long year. The office calls even as we begin the three-hour drive to the spa, meaning I have to finish one last assignment through some jury rigging of cell phone and laptop from the passenger seat of a rented Hyundai in a pounding rainstorm on a Saturday night.
So the next morning, when Milt, the massage therapist, gently knocks on the door to ask if I am ready for my treatment, I practically holler "Yes" and snuggle against the soft chamois of the table, feel the silkiness of the sheets draped over my legs and allow the soft classical music to lull me toward sleep.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
As Milt expertly begins to knead my hardened shoulders, a sweet, familiar scent wafts up. It takes me a moment, and then I recognize it: Chocolate. Within seconds, I am carried back to when I was eight, sitting around the kitchen table after school playing crazy eights with my babysitter, Michelle, a college student who indulged me in baking countless batches of brownies, and who first warned me that licking the batter could give me salmonella.
I am at the Spa at the Hotel Hershey, the newest addition to the 72-year-old Mediterranean palace overlooking one of America's most famous company towns, joining the theme park, outlet mall and model chocolate factory that already draw millions of visitors to Hershey each year. And while Milton Hershey himself might ask what a chocolate company in heartland Pennsylvania is doing in the massage and body scrub business, perhaps it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that this resort is doing a brisk business exfoliating half-naked customers with cocoa bean husks.
For Hershey, like a lot of other hotels, has recognized a new truth: In a 24/7 wired world of cellphones, e-mail, BlackBerrys and laptops -- one in which we are constantly under scrutiny and pressure, and our value is determined by how seemingly indispensable we are -- it's not enough to go on a simple vacation anymore. Now, people seem to need to elevate their vacation experience into something more meaningful, where they will come back a changed, detoxed, perhaps even a more spiritual person.
The very word "vacation" almost seems too mundane and trivial to describe the time painstakingly carved out of our busy existence. Instead, people have to go on a "retreat" -- one in which all of life's ills can be solved by a Green Coffee Body Wrap or a Spirit of Life ayurvedic massage.
"It's a badge of honor telling people how busy you are, then because you need to release so much, you go to a spa, because any other vacation wouldn't do," said Jim Root, the director of the spa at Miraval Life in Balance in Catalina, Arizona, which is doubling its number of rooms and adding a satellite location at Kapalua, on Maui. "Spa is all the `re-' words: renewal, rest, rejuvenate, revitalize. You come away with all those redone things."
Thus, like the pool in the 1960s and the fitness center in the 1990s, the spa has become the must-have for today's hotels, whether in a city center or rolling countryside. Starwood, which recently purchased the campy-chic Bliss Spas, is creating entire spa floors in six of its W Hotels from New York to Seoul, which will include spa suites in which guests can control the humidity, light and aromatherapy. Hyatt is building six spas, including one in spa-saturated Scottsdale, Ariz. And Wyndham, which owns the Golden Door spa, is extending the brand to four of its hotels by the end of 2006.
Other well-established spas like Canyon Ranch, Miraval and Lake Austin in Texas are expanding, opening satellite locations on cruise ships, and offering new and ever more ambitious treatments, like equine therapy, which promises to restore your emotional balance by evaluating how you groom, talk to and walk a horse.
The number of hotels or resort spas has more than tripled over the last five years, according to the International Spa Association. In 2000, there were 473, and this year there were 1,662, and that does not include so-called "destination spas" -- like Canyon Ranch, Miraval or Golden Door -- which now number 191, up from 70 in 2002. The hotel and resort segment is growing faster than any other in the spa industry. With 37.2 million visits, hotel and resort spas generated US$4.52 billion in revenue last year.
Spas are trying to distinguish themselves with indigenous treatments -- lava rock massages in Hawaii, papaya scrubs in the tropics, grape seed facials in Sonoma and maple body wraps in the Northeast. At the Golden Door branch at the Boulders, in Carefree, Arizona, the latest offering is the Tipi, where a Native American shaman guides clients through meditation, smudging their bodies with sage, sweetgrass and cedar.
At Maroma, the laid-back luxury resort run by Orient-Express Hotels south of Cancun, the centerpiece treatment is a Maya sweat lodge, or temezcal, with local herbs, fruit, and mud treatments around a lava rock fire, followed by a moonlit ocean swim.
Spas are also appealing to a new clientele: The spa association's consumer survey found that 29 percent of visitors to hotel or resort spas last year were men. Susan Harmsworth, the chief executive of Espa, which operates its own spas in England and others around the world for Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons and other chains, says that as many as 40 percent or 50 percent of their clients are men.
And to get reluctant men over any initial unease, spas are offering gimmicks -- the Spa at Cranwell in Lenox, Massachusettes, for instance, bills its thermal clay therapy as the perfect antidote to a long day of golf.
Spas are turning up at some unlikely places, too. Colonial Williamsburg will open its first in 2006, housed in a former museum. (Therapists, alas, will not wear period costumes, but planners say the treatments may reflect the historical theme -- hot apple cider facials, perhaps.) Even Disney World is getting into the act, remaking the Disney Institute near Orlando -- envisioned by Michael Eisner as an educational retreat -- into Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa, where girls as young as four can join their parents for My First Manicure, My First Pedicure and My First Facial.
Robbie Blinkoff, the principal anthropologist at Context Research, a marketing consultancy in Baltimore, agrees that there seems to be a need -- putting that 4-year-old girl with the mudpack aside for a minute -- for people to feel they are getting something of lasting value out of their vacation.
Mary Tabacchi, an associate professor at Cornell's School of Hotel Administration, said that in a study she conducted comparing people who went on vacation with those who went to a spa, the spa-goers came back saying they felt calmer, more refreshed and "in command of themselves."
And as working 80 hours a week has become a status symbol among a certain set, going to a spa has become the vacation corollary. The spa association has gone so far as to recommend that spas market themselves as a kind of vacation "work," calling our desire to improve ourselves, even at the expense of fun, a "deep cultural driver."
"Spa," the name of a celebrated Belgian health resort, is said by some to be short for "solus par aqua," Latin for "health through water." But at Hershey, they have reinvented that as solus par chocolate.
"Leave it to Hershey to make chocolate good for you," the promoters promise -- and they intend to prove it. The inhalation room smells of peppermint, as in Patties. In the quiet room overlooking the ornately sculptured grounds, there are pots of hot chocolate to flush out all those toxins.
John Korpi, a spa consultant and president of the ISPA foundation said: "It used to be a hotel could differentiate itself from its competitors by having a spa. Now it's just not competitive at all if it doesn't have one."
Still, the new spas are not always what their names might suggest.
Many longtime spa operators say that as spas have appealed to the mass market, they have watered down the original ideals of promoting a sound body and sound mind.
"They add a hair salon and two treatment rooms and call it a spa because that's the thing at the moment," said Harmsworth, the chief executive of Espa.
At Hershey, too, the spa zen was marred somewhat by the families roaming the hallways with their bags of Taco Bell dinners and Hersheypark souvenir and the teenagers playing video games just down the stairs from the spa.
But other consultants say it is by design that the new spas aren't about the kind of deprivation many people associate with spas. Bliss49, the spa at W's flagship in New York, offers cold beer and Xbox in the men's locker room. Men waiting at the spa at the Borgata in Atlantic City can play pool or watch sports on plasma televisions.
And the more purist spas like Golden Door and Miraval say they are not bothered by the new developments. They do not see the hotel spas as competition, but as a farm team of sorts. Start with chocolate hydrotherapy or a little Xbox on a gambling weekend away and soon enough, you'll be spending five days in the Arizona hills, getting up at 5:30 in the morning for a long hike before your low-fat muesli.
Readers' travel letters
Living in Taiwan for the past year-and-a-half has made coming to Thailand to visit my girlfriend in Krabi easy. I had no clue sleepy beach towns could be so exciting.
Last Sunday three young bar staff that live and work at my girlfriend's seafront bar called our home and told us a huge wave had flooded the bar.
On our way to the bar we passed scores of trucks, filled with people heading in the opposite direction, trying to get to higher ground. We also received a phonecall from friends warning us to stay away from the beach, as it was devastated.
Not realizing the scope of the disaster, we arrived at the bar and could not believe our eyes. Seawater had come up to 90m past the bar, carrying with it all of the front lights, some tables and chairs and anything else that wasn't anchored in place. The wave easily lifted up heavy cement tables and distributed them around the lot.
We were incredibly lucky. We were not inundated, though some water seeped through the locked doors and windows, depositing mud and sand. The patio was 7cm deep in mud and sand. We had no idea that so many others, in other places had lost their lives and livelihoods. In fact, our bar was one of the only ones in the area that didn't receive major damage.
We quickly loaded our truck, all the while watching the sea closely to see if another wave was coming. Suddenly, people began running away from the beach on foot, motorcycle, or by truck. Another wave was on its way. I shouted at the staff to get in the truck and we drove quickly as the third wave chased us out on to the road.
The following few days were crazy. We spent two nights holding wave watches and had 15 people and three children staying out at our house.
Here in Ao Nang the clean-up is almost finished but the aftermath is still being dealt with. Though there is a comparatively lower death toll here, many people have lost their homes and businesses.
Many of the bodies from Koh Phi Phi and Khao Lak are being sent to the Chinese temple in Krabi until they can be identified. We went down there on Dec. 27 to donate clothes and money and to offer help.
There was a smell of death from a block away that I am sure will remain in my mind forever. The scene was horrible. Hundreds of coffins were stacked five or six high, with pictures on the end of them in the hope the bodies would be identified. More bodies are still being found and the government expects the death toll to continue to rise.
Sometimes, it appears as though life in Ao Nang has returned to normal, but beneath the surface there is much apprehension about what is going to happen here. Most of the tourists have left and most business owners don't expect them to be back for at least a year or more. There is a heavy sense of gloom everywhere you go.
People are working together regardless of race, religion or nationality to try to help others. Through all of the grief it is amazing to see everyone working together and pitching in.
It is incredible to find out how much life really means, it's not just about business and making money, it is about helping one another and making sure everyone is safe.
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Jeff Morey contributed this letter in an e-mail from Krabi, Thailand. If you have a travel story or comments that may interest readers, please contact features@taipeitimes.com
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