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Spas The New Money-Spinner for Asian Tourism Industry
Urban spas offering services ranging from baths simulating far-flung, exotic locations to cultural oil massages are mushrooming in Asia, creating a new money spinner for the travel industry.
Tourists, stressed executives and even families are paying to be pampered in quiet, scent-filled retreats tucked away in hotels or commercial buildings and marketed as part of a healthy lifestyle.
The experience comes in many forms, ranging from a variety of traditional Asian massages to rejuvenating therapies, facials, body wraps and hi-tech "hydro therapy" baths. "We see it as a growing industry all over Asia," said Peter Sng, Asia-Pacific director for the International Spa Association and president of the Spa Industry Association of Singapore.
Some key growth areas are Taiwan, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, with less-developed countries like Vietnam and Cambodia "now awakening to the benefits of the spa industry," Sng told AFP in an interview. He said industry expansion is driven by growing belief that spas can enhance health, boost immune systems and reduce stress.
Spas also cater to the human need for pampering and relaxation. "With people more widely travelled, we see spas partnering tourism to be the in thing," said Sng.
Julie Garrow, director of Intelligent Spas, an independent research company, said four-and five-star hotels were increasingly integrating spas into their properties. But she observed that "too many hotels are putting in spas under competitive pressure without understanding the fundamentals."
Sng said many travellers now ask hotels first if they have spa facilities. It is becoming an essential component... because people now travel at a more leisurely pace," he said, adding most hotel spas are managed separately by specialist companies.
Asia is drawing from its rich cultural traditions to differentiate itself from Western spas, which are described as "clinical."
For a traditional Thai massage, for example, customers are ushered into a room designed to create the ambience of the Southeast Asian nation from the decor to the recorded music. The cultural experience is repeated with a Balinese massage or an Indian ayurvedic rub-down. "What we have are the various Asian traditions that are now being seen as an exotic form of treatment by the Western traveller," Sng said. Garrow added that "foreign visitors typically enjoy spa treatments based on cultural remedies and rituals, so spas generally take advantage of this by designing signature treatments promoting these elements."
Sng said a new and growing market is individuals aged under 21 like students and children. More couples are also going for massages in twin therapy rooms, which are said to promote romance and intimacy.
There is no firm estimate on the size of the Asian spa industry. Available research provided by Intelligent Spas, however, showed it generated more than 500 million US dollars in Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and New Zealand in the year ended June 2003.
Sng said the spa and "wellness" industry in Singapore is worth about 70 million dollars a year. Asia's spa industry is small compared with the 16-billion-dollars a year market in the United States, but this leaves ample room for growth, analysts said.
In Asia, massage remains the most popular spa treatment. A regionwide consumer survey by Intelligent Spas in the year ended October 2003 showed 54 percent of respondents favoured massage, with 85 percent saying "pure relaxation" was their main reason for taking a spa vacation.
While more females patronise upmarket spas, the number of male customers is growing, industry players said. Foreigners account for a bulk of the clientele. The industry's most pressing challenges are overcoming the lack of trained therapists and erasing the sleazy image created by brothels masquerading as "health centers". "In some countries, spas are still equated to the sex industry so there is an image problem," said Sng.
Singapore 5/9/2004
