FANCY A lifestyle consultation over massage and hot-stone therapy? Most of Scotland's luxury hotels can arrange it for a price as they rush to install what is rapidly becoming the obligatory indulgence for the new breed of five-star guests: a spa.

As the industry pursues the well-heeled traveller, the spa and add-on services are rapidly turning into some of the industry's most important profit centres.

Long gone are the days when a guest expected no more than a room and a square meal. Even some four-star hotels offer a hedonistic range of exotic treatments such as Japanese salt steam rooms, body polishes, waxing, reflexology, bio saunas, organic healing, rain forest water treatments and Indian head massages, to name a few.

"You couldn't call yourself a resort hotel without a very good spa," he adds. "It's essential to the business model. Many of our guests come specifically for the spa."

All the top-end hotels report a growing demand for such treatments and they have become selling points. Indeed there is a popular website called Hotels With Spas on which any self-respecting resort hotel must be listed. "We can see that a booking has come through the site," says the manager of a four-star hotel in Perthshire. "It helps us know what people are looking for."

Responding to the trend towards self-pampering, hotels offer everything from "Zen hen" packages for women seeking a break, to sweaty self-analysis for stressed executives. Some have even invaded the territory of the NHS, boasting pre and post-natal organic healing sessions. "Everbody's gone spa-mad," adds Selbie.

Hitherto, most of the business has been met by companies south of the Border but one Scottish company that has emerged to satisfy demand is Glasgow-based Spa Developments. Chief executive and shareholder is Brian Hunter, who has managed spas between Edinburgh and Hong Kong and knows how much they can contribute to revenue.

"A well-run spa of about 2000 square metres with a good thermal suite including sauna, hydro pool, swimming pool, treatment rooms and relaxation, should make a bottom-line profit of 25% plus," he estimates. That is generally a higher margin than on rooms. Spas also have the merit, he points out, of producing year-round cashflow because they attract guests looking for rejuvenation in winter.

Since it launched in 2002, Spa Developments has developed a plum client base that includes the Hilton Group, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Rezidor Hotels and Royal Caribbean Cruises. (Most in the industry says the spa phenomenon started on cruise ships before working its way ashore.) The company's biggest contract is with the De Vere chain's Deluxe brand, which this month opens its first Spa Development installation at Cameron House Hotel at Loch Lomond. The spa is worth around £10 million.

"We are working on the planning and design of four new spas for the De Vere group," Hunter says. Next up is the Royal Bath in Bournemouth, Carden Park near Chester and The Grand in Brighton. It is a measure of the boom in the spa business that the total capital value of projects on the books of Spa Developments runs to £40-£50m.

In the last few years, the definition of a spa has widened from a masseur and a treatment room, plus perhaps a gym, to embrace just about every tangible means of spoiling yourself and working out. These days must-haves include treatment and relaxation rooms (some hotels boast a dozen), heated 20-metre pools, hot tubs and hot stones, gyms with equipment that remembers how much you lifted last time you stayed, and bio saunas. And, of course, a team of skilled attendants.

Spas are not cheap to install, running from £1.5m for a basic set-up to £10m upwards for the works. (The Edinburgh Sheraton's award-winning One Spa is rumoured to have cost £11m.) They are not, however, automatic goldmines, adds Hunter, and have to be carefully managed. Expensive to run, energy and staff are the two biggest costs. On average the wage bill claims about 45% of turnover. Pools and gyms tend to have the highest overheads.

But for most destination hotels the cost is worth it. For a couple for two nights with the full treatment, the Edinburgh Sheraton charges £720.

So far it is mainly women who are prepared to spend that kind of money. For example, one of the most popular deals at Macdonald's refurbished Marine Hotel in North Berwick is the "Mother and Daughter" package at £130 per person. And St Andrews Old Course Hotel and Golf Resort sells a lot of its "Girls' Getaway" deals at £104.

However, men have begun to join the rush to hedonism. Not that long ago "men wouldn't be seen dead in a spa", as Selbie remembers. But many hotels now report about 20% male patronage, a figure that is growing as men warm to the pleasure of reading the business news on a hot table while the tension is kneaded out of their neck and shoulders.

"Most men come for the massage," says one spa manager, "It's definitely a growth area for us."

The spa is the latest manifestation of a general flight towards luxury in hotels. Industry veterans say it started about 20-30 years ago when a private bathroom was considered special and has carried on through in-room telephones and progressively higher-quality televisions and multiple programmes to swimming pools, gyms and now spas.

The next big thing, the industry predicts, will be "medi-spas" which provide the whole package of body, mind and soul-healing therapies in "a fusion of medical and holistic treatments".

However, it is important not to forget the basics. As Selbie points out, the most important luxury of all is still a good night's sleep. When his hotel remembered this and bought scores of new beds, featuring them in marketing, occupancy rates shot up.

Source Sunday Herald