During the last 2 decades, hotels spas have been conceived and built as amenities to the hotel to boost the stay length of the guests.  Today, hotel executives realize that the gain in average stay does not offset the cost of building and maintaining such huge and expensive amenities.  The next challenge of the hotels will be to redesign these “spa dinosaurs” with proper floor plans and traffic flow, to support the spa operations and revenues, including spa retail sales while preserving the clients experience.

This last week, I received from a European spa architect the floor plan and photos of a new spa in a hotel in Europe.  The pictures are beautiful!  from an aesthetic perspective, it is a “master piece”!  But looking at the floor plan, the analysis is very different:  7,000 square feet with only 2 treatment rooms, and all the rest is amenities…  Not even a retail space…

The potential income of such a spa will never even pay for the maintenance costs!  When designing a spa, the spa designer or spa architect must value the ROI (return on investment) as much as the aesthetics of the spa!!