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Great Hotel Spas
Four Seasons Hampshire, Hampshire, EnglandThe 15-room spa, in a brick stable block that dates back to 1528, is a modern sanctuary of slate floors, white walls with some original ceiling beams. Your therapist asks what color lights and sounds you would like (products are Espa). In the adjacent gym, choose a lucky motivational motto from a rack of tiny rolled up scrolls, then head for the Olympic sized pool, in a glass conservatory, and swim out to the year-round vitality pool. Spa Manager is Clive McNish. |   |
Billed as the world's first underwater spa room, it is, thanks to designers Carl Ettensperger and Delphine Lyon, just that. You walk down a wooden staircase into a below-water fish bowl with all-glass walls. Hundreds of exotic fish swim outside, and yes, lying on the massage table for your Elemis back treatment you can, thanks to an angled mirror, see what is going on. | |
The Plateau, HONG KONGPart of the massive Grand Hyatt, this 22-room spa-with-bedrooms run by Manager Niamh O'Connell, nonetheless feels like a bijou golden cocoon. I stayed in 1110, a gem of soft wood, marble walkways, platform-set futon with bedhead of a glass wall, the bathwater rising up behind it. Carita, Decleor and Pegge Sage are the brands here. Have a facial looking out over the harbor to Kowloon Island, and then a health breakfast in Plateau's serene dedicated dining courtyard. | |
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Conveniently right in the hotel, the spa, under its Manager Ryan Crabbe, has a La Maison de Beauté Carita salon and 14 treatment rooms. The ashiatsu, an adaptation of Asian barefoot massage, by a Colombian therapist named Mabel was truly memorable. She hangs from horizontally-set bamboo rails just belong the ceiling and literally massages your back with her feet. | |
A Rockies Rehydration here includes a dry body scrub and then Kerstin Florian warm aloe massage and wrap. The spa has 25 treatment rooms and a choice of relaxation rooms. Order a bento box snack, say teriyaki glazed salmon with dill mayonnaise, sesame glass noodle salad, Greek salad with feta and olives, baby shrimp pasta salad, yoghurt fruit flan. My favorite bedrooms are in-tower suites, say the two-floor 997. | |
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The spa, devised with the help of Espa, is built around an immaculate green garden - rare among the sandy atolls of the Maldives. All the treatment rooms have outdoor rainforest showers. Choose hot stones, or perhaps a back massage with Victoria, or yoga with Sean. Spa manager Kathryn Green came from the QM2 and Canyon Ranch. | |
Sea & Stars Night Massage for Two is a signature here, at a resort where you must reserve treatments ahead as therapists are booked solid (spa manager is Damian Viera). To really immerse yourself in the wellness feeling, take the three-night Spa Discovery package, which includes seven treatments and a pair of stretch or yoga classes. | |
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