In some cases, the spa is an extra service offered to guests of a business.
In other cases, the spa is the main focus of the business
Not all spas and wellness businesses are alike. Just as you will find many types of hotels, there are diverse spas within the hospitality, wellness and tourism industries. A career in spa management could take you to different kinds of settings and brands. This could be beneficial as you could match your skills and preferences to the type of wellness business that fits you best.
The spa is often an extra service offered to the guests of a business, but in some cases, the spa is the main focus of the business. Spa types include day spas, hotel spas, destination spas, medical spas and more.
Day Spas
As the name implies, day spas are places to visit without accommodation attached to the spa. These are businesses that locals and tourists can visit, generally to receive treatments focused on relaxation, personal care and beauty.
Day spas tend to offer relaxation and wellness treatments like massages and baths. They often include salon services to care for nails and hair, and their offerings often include skin treatments like facials. Each day spa may have a certain brand, focus or setting that determines the types of treatments offered and unique offerings. For example, you may find an organic day spa that uses organic products or a spa with specialty healing baths and wraps. Many of these spas include features like steam rooms, saunas and hot tubs.
Hotel Spas
Hotel or resort spas offer the relaxation and treatments of a spa directly on site at your place of accommodation. This becomes one of the services that a hotel or resort can offer to its guests, which is especially a good fit for high-end brands.
The services of each spa will vary by the hotel and brand it is attached to and the type of clientele it is trying to attract. Generally, this type of spa would offer relaxing and rejuvenating treatments to improve a vacation, also providing treatments focused on enhancing beauty and helping guests to look and feel their best for any occasion. Spa hotels tend to make guests feel special through a first-class experience.
These spas generally offer the typical treatments and amenities you would expect, such as a sauna, salon and massages. Then, other services become highly customized by the brand and the destination and experience being created at this hotel. You may expect seaweed wraps and sea salt treatments at hotels near the ocean or healing treatments offered at a wellness hotel focused on rejuvenation and health.
Destination Spas
While a hotel may include spa services in its offerings, a destination spa is a vacation spot with the spa as the main attraction of the stay. These are generally resorts that people visit specifically for the spa services of the destination. People might visit a hotel spa while on a vacation that involves various activities. But people visit a destination spa to spend the vacation using the spa services.
Guests may visit this type of spa with certain goals in mind, such as to relaxation, healing, improving health and wellness, rejuvenation or having a medical procedure. Some of these spas were built around a natural feature like mineral springs, while others create their own services.
These may include services that help people detox and get a fresh start on a healthy lifestyle and could include fitness programs, healthy meals and education on health and wellness.
Medical Spas
Medical spas combine medical applications, which are normally conducted in a medical practice, with the experience of a day spa.
Some hotel operators are establishing themselves as spa destinations that are primarily medically oriented and have the best specialist staff. The guests stay for some time, in order to recover, for instance after a cancer treatment, to detoxify the body, to optimize the metabolism or to strive for a medical weight loss. To properly integrate these medical applications into spa settings, well-trained professionals and managers are needed.
There are also many medical spas, or medspas or medi-spas, that center on anti-aging and aesthetic treatments instead of going to a doctor’s office. This type of medical spa could offer a broad range of services. Some services target lines, wrinkles, sagging and other signs of aging on the skin. Others may help a person lose weight, detox or remove unwanted hair, scars, stretch marks or veins. Treatments could include fillers, medical facials, laser therapies and others.
Complementary and Alternative Health Spas
While Western medicine primarily treats symptoms, it is complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) that has helped connect medicine with spa or wellness providers. These are natural or holistic methods that focus on underlying causes of health concerns or on using natural methods of promoting wellness. CAM treatments can include chiropractic, acupuncture, herbal teas and lotions, dietary changes, water cures and other approaches.
Some of these spas have a holistic focus that includes the mind, body and spirit into wellness ideas. For example, these spas could include meditation and yoga into their services.
Another popular spa type in this category is an Ayurvedic spa, which follows practices of the traditional Ayurveda medicine system. These spas include holistic views of wellness and may include a variety of Ayurvedic treatments including yoga, herbs, dietary changes and detoxification.
These spas require professionals within each branch of CAM to practice their specialty with guests. They should also have an atmosphere that promotes wellness, meditation and healing.
Club Spas
These spas are generally part of fitness clubs, so they offer another service to members or visitors who come to focus on their fitness and health. These spas are like day spas because they are not attached to overnight accommodations, and they offer various spa services for a quick daytime visit. Unlike day spas which are often freestanding businesses, these spas are part of the fitness club business.
The spa services offered in these businesses usually follow the theme of fitness and wellness. They provide an additional service for people who are paying for a gym or health club membership, yet these businesses may offer day passes to non-members.
These health and fitness-oriented spas generally have steam rooms, saunas and hot tubs. They may also include swimming pools, massages, skin and body treatments, and holistic treatments. In addition to the spa services, members generally have access to other features like the gym, a lounge and a café or bar. Some may include other services common to traditional spas, such as a salon.
Health and Fitness Spas
Guests may want to visit specialized health and fitness spas to improve their health or reach a goal like losing weight. These spas could include health farms, health spas or boot camp spas. They often include a customized approach that helps each person reach health goals through fitness classes, diet and exercise coaching, calorie-controlled meals and other features. These spas may also provide relaxing treatments to use as a break from nutrition and fitness programs.
Health and fitness spas require professionals in the respective fields to offer nutritional meals, fitness classes and other specialized services.
