It’s time to unveil the Tatler Spa Guide Award Winners 2023
1/7BEST GRAND INSTITUTION: Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, Antibes, France
Few hotels have the legendary reputation of Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. The grande dame of the Côte d’Azur – now 150 years old – is as dazzling as ever; its elegant grounds heady with the scent of roses; the snow-white chateau as grand as Versailles. The views are outstanding: glittering cobalt as far as the eye can see from the majestic Grande Allée, where Pablo Picasso, Marlene Dietrich and F Scott Fitzgerald once walked. The cliffside pool is still as scintillating as when Slim Aarons photographed it, though summer on the Riviera only truly starts with the opening of the nautical-chic Eden-Roc Grill, where power lunches play out over grilled lobster (the croque monsieur with truffle butter is also of note). But now, with the opening of the new Dior Spa Eden-Roc, the ante has been upped. Past crisp lawns and an immaculate tennis court, the space comes into view: hidden away by bucolic roses and palms. In an approach that’s as haute couture as its namesake, guests can choose where to indulge: perhaps out of the heat, within the Riviera Suite outfitted in signature Dior textiles; through gossamer-fine curtains and beneath a canopy of tangled vines in the airy alfresco Gazebo; or inside the picture-perfect Cabana, with its private sun-shaded terrace. Wherever one chooses to spa, the treatments are exemplary: flitting between the hi-tech (such as Hydrafacials, infused with the peeling properties of Dior’s cult floral-infused lotion) and the healing (the Dioriginels Rituals – a series of escapist reveries for mind and body). The Riviera Solar Glow – a soothing symphony of enzymatic exfoliation, therapeutic massage and satiny oil – leaves one looking radiant (and ready for the grand reveal...).
Doubles from £754 (oetkercollection.com).
Fotostudio Alexander Haiden 1070 Wien2/7BEST SUPERCHARGING SOJOURN: Lanserhof Sylt, North Frisian Islands, Germany
There is a cult-like veneration for the Lanserhof group, which is the spa equivalent of The Row: its ‘stealth-health/stealth-wealth’ approach designed for seriously rich, minimal-minded aesthetes who mean business. Arriving in a blacked-out electric Mercedes at the newest outpost on the island of Sylt – Germany’s answer to the Hamptons – you’re ushered into a Bondian lair, with swathes of pale larch, sparkling sci-fi corridors and loft-style bedrooms. But the reason you come is for de-acidification, following the late Dr FX Mayr’s progressive belief that a stressed digestive system leads to infection, toxicity and premature ageing. And, of course, you come for total immersion in the most progressive medical testing facility in Europe, where the 100-plus diagnostic options range from blood tests to detect deficiencies and hormonal imbalances to ultrasound and ‘bioimpedance’ analysis. Though the chefs work miracles with beetroot, goat’s cheese and spelt bread, dietary rigour is mandatory: either chewing every mouthful 40 times; or, if you’re on the Level 0 fast, an abstinence that allows only vegetable broth and unlimited herbal Base Tea. (An award should go to chef Dietmar, whose way with white-carrot bouillon and spelt crackers has such finesse that you could be dining at Oswald’s.) However, the truly magic ingredient here is the iodine-rich sea air, which hits you as you cycle through the windswept, otherworldly landscape. It’s astonishing how tiring the road to wellness can be – so thank heavens for the gentle yoga, en-suite saunas and IV drips, not to mention the best imaginable head massage and craniosacral therapy. Institutionalisation has never looked so good: everything runs on time, everyone knows your name, and under the care of the illustrious doctors and various spa therapists, you’ll experience a profound transformation. Indisputably, the spa of the year.
Healing Holidays (healingholidays.com) offers a seven-night Cure Classic programme from £6,545, full board, including transfers.
3/7BEST HEALING HIDEAWAY: Kamalya, Koh Samui, Thailand
This is arguably the most positive place on earth: a little stretch of Eden, winding up a jungle-thatched hillside from the warm waters lapping meditatively at its shores. Everyone here is calm, kind and serene – and none more than founders Karina and John Stewart, who set up the retreat nearly 20 years ago, on the site of a cave where Buddhist monks had practised for centuries before. Here you’ll find an abundance of sustenance for the body and the soul: from programmes designed to detoxify and cleanse negative energy to ones that aim to instil change, enhance positivity and even address depleted adrenal glands. Assessments go deep, picking through every aspect of your life, and end with tailored recommendations. Perhaps personal mentoring from Praveena, a spookily insightful former nun, whose observations are startling. Or sessions with a reiki master so spellbinding that even sceptics have been converted. The Wellness Sanctuary has more than 70 treatments with origins in East and West. And over in the new Longevity House, hi-tech health solutions range from IV vitamin-drips to the ultra-popular ozone therapy to supercharge immunity. There’s a quasi-magical energy at play, which seeps into everything. It’s in the heart thumpingly lovely rooms and villas, some with private pools, where alfresco baths are serenaded by birds. It’s in the classes, from sunrise meditation to yoga. And it’s in the deprivation-shunning fare – mangoes, fish, organic veg, even a delectable chocolate mousse – on which, somehow, the pounds still melt away.
Healing Holidays (healingholidays.com) offers a seven-night Relax & Renew programme from £2,689, full board, including transfers.
4/7BEST BRIGHT & BEAUTIFUL: Heckfield Place, Hampshire, UK
When Heckfield Place opened in 2018, visitors raved about the bucolic gardens and bountiful produce from its biodynamic farm – which still supplies Skye Gyngell’s divine on-site restaurant – as well as the grand main house with its fine Georgian bones and wildly Instagrammable interiors. Back then, you could get a perfectly good facial or massage in two petite treatment rooms called the Little Bothy. But five years later, a former gardener’s shelter has been converted and extended, creating the Bothy, and the original building has been given a new lease of life; its demure footprint extending into the countryside as well as two new light-flooded floors below. Now it dances off the fossilised-limestone floors, across the artwork from founder Dr Chan’s private collection, down the spiralling stone staircase and into a 17,000-square-foot sanctuary. On arrival, for minimal distraction from the outside world, expect your phone to be locked in a wooden box – and prepare for an immense sensory overload. The scent of camomile is omni-present; birdsong, recorded on the estate’s woodland during lockdown, echoes in the Heckfield Place’s new wellbeing space, the Bothy, opened this year corridors; soft, putty-coloured robes envelop you in a warm embrace; and the next-level treatments are delivered by therapists whose love of what they do can be felt in their fingertips. Among their offerings are skin-polishing facials, using Heckfield’s own range of naturally active products, and some spookily diagnostic reflexology. But for those looking to delve deeper, the Wildsmith Time programme is the ticket. You’re eased in with a spell of kinesiology – to identify imbalance and weaknesses throughout the lower trunk, neck and back – before two hours of hands-on healing, gliding between deep-tissue massage and delicious stretching to relieve compression and create space in the body. As those magic hands work on your abdomen, the soles of your feet and your face, you feel the blood rushing back, the fascia unsticking and the body almost imperceptibly shifting. Then it’s upstairs to the Sun Room for gut-friendly broths and wholegrain bowls before braving the great outdoors. The hydrotherapy pool, in the shade of a 100-year-old English oak, is where time truly stands still.
Doubles from £550 (heckfieldplace.com).
5/7BEST REMOTE RETREAT: Rakxa, Bangkok, Thailand
Cycling through the jasmine-scented jungle, birds chirping in the dappled light, you’ll feel a thousand miles from civilisation. In fact, this quietly healing destination is an hour from Bangkok, though nestled in the ‘Green Lung’ island of Bang Krachao in the Chao Phraya river, where the air is mountain-pure. For all that, it’s a pioneering place, with a trailblazing approach; and since RAKxa is a subsidiary partner of the celebrated Bumrungrad International Hospital, it interweaves world-leading medicine with traditional Thai, Chinese and Ayurvedic practices. The backbone of this thoroughly integrative retreat is Mother Nature. Among the dense vegetation, the dreamy gardens and majestic pavilions flanked by banyan trees, carefully curated programmes dance between those designed to de-stress and to improve digestion, to enhance mobility and to ease symptoms of long Covid; all managed expertly and intuitively by advisors who place as much emphasis on your emotional as your physical goals. After tests to measure dopamine levels, pollutants and hormonal imbalances, equilibrium is restored with vitamin drips, crystal healing, cupping and massages. One treatment definitely worth trying is the traditional Thai Ya Pao Detoxification, revered for its ability to reduce inflammation of the gut, which sees a tiny fire lit on the abdomen, resting on layers of gauze, salt and herb paste. The villas, in calming shades of taupe, are so gorgeous you’ll want to move in, while the nutrition is as elevated as it is elegant: Kombucha mock-tails, followed by anti-inflammatory grilled tiger prawns with apple, broccoli consommé, red grouper and miso, ending with a dark chocolate brownie. Guests experience profound changes here – but more than that, they take away new ways to navigate the road ahead.
Healing Holidays (healingholidays.com) offers a five-night Rest & Reset programme from £4,059, full board, including transfers.
Robert Rieger6/7BEST URBAN OASIS: Aman New York, USA
Soaring high above Billionaire’s Row is Manhattan’s most talked-about spa; and there’s good reason for the chatter. Only residents, members and guests can glide through the hotel’s heavy doors and ascend to its sandalwood-scented realms. This is the Aman group’s first American urban foray; and inside, the original MOMA residence has morphed into an ode to Japanese minimalism, with swathes of coffee-coloured marble, blackened steel and lofty, sprawling, sanctuary-like suites. (It took architect Jean-Michel Gathy seven years to transform the famous Crown Building.) Outside, the Garden Terrace – jutting over Fifth Avenue like an intricate bird cage – is the hotspot, where media moguls lounge on low-slung sofas and fireplaces flicker behind glass. (There’s one in every room, a rarity in Midtown.) However the soul of this edifice is the spa: over 25,000 square feet of low-lit, linen-panelled space, where East meets West. Here, bracing blasts of cryotherapy reinvigorate weary travellers; spells in the hypoxic chamber improve sleep and lung capacity; holistic facials bring the gleam back to tired skin. In the understated spa suites, grounding rituals work their magic with hot stones, poultices of Himalayan salt and Tibetan tapping techniques, helping to restore and recharge (though to truly retreat, book a private spa house, with a hammam or banya, hot and cold plunge pools and a peaceful terrace). Otherwise, make for the hi-tech gym, where iced towels, hydrogenated water and an electrifying skyline vista take one’s workout to infinity and beyond.
Doubles from £1,534 (aman.com).
7/7The Tatler Spa Guide 2023 is on sale now with the November issue starring Naomi Watts
