The aim is for immersive wellness to make guests see and feel in a new way / Photo: Wund Holdings
What trends do you see driving change in wellness? From the music industry pivoting to wellness music to new technologies that capture our biometric data to create personalised, healing breathwork – wellness is undergoing a momentous digital transformation and we’re entering the era of adaptive, personalised digital wellbeing solutions.
You’re working with Thermengruppe Josef Wund to create new services – what will these look like? It’s all about immersive wellness. We’re developing a number of different technologies such as instructor-led or self-guided classes against changing, spectacular backdrops, delivered on room-sized curved screens in an immersive, biophilic environment. Also, multisensory chroma yoga, enabled with motion tracking-based feedback.
The aim is for immersive wellness to make guests see, feel and experience in a new and multisensory way.
Tell us more about Thermengruppe Josef Wund It’s a German company that designs, develops and operates resorts that combine the ancient tradition of thermal baths with the thrills of a modern waterpark, offering a wide range of wellness options.
This is all set within very large, architecturally spectacular, light-filled, biophilic spaces full of real vegetation and hundreds of giant palm trees.
The resorts offer guests a unique wellbeing proposition, a refuge from the stresses of daily life and a holiday destination that’s just a short commute away.
How did the partnership come about? When Thermengruppe Josef Wund approached us in early 2019, it was initially to develop a collaboration for our Virtual Reality SkySlide product, that we’d launched on the viewing platform of the Shard in London two years before (ww.spabusiness.com/skyslide).
However, during the course of our initial conversations, it quickly became clear that there was an opportunity to extend our collaboration beyond a single VR project, and look at ways of widening Wund’s core proposition beyond the physical and into the metaverse.
How did the partnership develop? Under the working title ‘Therme in your pocket’, we began a series of work-streams to establish and define how a digital ‘experiential’ layer could be added to their customer journey to meaningfully extend what was on offer in bricks and mortar; how we could enable digital and physical services for enhanced wellbeing, on site, on the go, at home, and at work.
At the discovery phase, we researched the market for digitally-enabled wellbeing services from blockbuster Apps such as Calm, as well as trends – for example, the quantified/optimised self and health metrics. What became clear, very quickly, was the need to differentiate the new offer, and the vision of the service that Wund would bring to the market from more generic wellbeing propositions.
What direction did you head in? We had to be clear about the specific and evolving needs and expectations of Wund’s core audience. Supported by a process of user and stakeholder interviews we arrived at a few key considerations. While the general wellness market has seen exponential growth, particularly in the shape of global, self-serve wellness apps – either VC-funded, or from tech incumbents – we wanted to ensure that Wund’s offer was more authentic, more connected with their physical sites and services and their local and regional audiences.
How are you making it different? With two million guests visiting Wund resorts annually, there’s a real gap for products and services that can meaningfully extend the company’s service offer and brand.
This presents a unique opportunity for a credible presence built on a well-established ecosystem within an otherwise increasingly crowded and generic wellness market.
The need for heightened focus on wellbeing has never been more acute. The pandemic has pushed narratives centre-stage that had been on the margins before, such as mental health, burnout, work-life balance, nutrition, and so on.
What will the new services look like? Digital therapeutics could offer digital-first wellness ‘prescriptions’, digital ‘treatments’ and curated content to alter mood and improve wellbeing. Our roadmap for Wund’s onsite and offsite programming will consist of two key principles:
1. Immersive Wellness Solutions These will deliver evidence-based wellness, combined with immersive technology to create interactive installations, experiential relaxation programmes and products.
2. The importance of community We want to support Wund’s community to transform anxiety, support healthier lifestyles, and improve productivity. This will happen by building a community around wellness and technology, supporting a transition from a transactional proposition to the consumer becoming partners in striving for attainable wellness.
And what effects will they have? These emerging ‘digital nutrition’ tools categorise content based on its proven ability to evoke six core emotions or mood groups: calm, confidence, connection, energy, focus, and happiness. These moods are linked to the activity of neurotransmitters and hormones such as GABA, dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, acetylcholine, and serotonin.
How do you see the future of digital wellness? Wellbeing needs redefining now that being digital has become a ‘thing’. We’re excited to be part of the redefinition of how meaningful immersive experiences can add value and a sense of wellbeing to people, wherever they’re at home, at work, on the go or at play. We think of it as wellbeing remixed for the age of the metaverse.
Read more from this issue of Spa Business magazine
View contents of Spa Business 2022 issue 2
Editor's letter: The wellness metaverse
We’re being handed a powerful new tool that will become a channel for creativity and innovation – pioneering wellness operators are already getting to grips with its exciting potential
Spa People: Michael Stusser
The wellness pioneer explains how he created an authentic Japanese bathing experience in the heart of the California hills
Spa People: Scot Toon
The Asia MD of The Pavilions Hotels & Resorts unveils the company's latest island development plans
Project preview: Off-grid
Svart Six Senses is set to open in Norway in 2024, and redefine the meaning of sustainable wellness tourism and regenerative travel
Sponsored: Myrtha Wellness: watertight expertise
Myrtha has transformed the world of aquatics over the last 60 years. Now it’s bringing its ingenuity-driven expertise to the international wellness industry
Interview: Rainer Usselmann
Tech business Happy Finish is bringing metaverse-based experiences to the wellness sector, working with Wund
Everyone's talking about: Menopause
From taboo to hot topic – how can spas offer treatments and a safe space for women to explore this often challenging phase of life?
Research: Bounceback
PwC says the US spa market was worth US$1bn in 2021 and growing well, according to data from ISPA's latest industry-wide study
First person: An icon reborn
Fairmont unveils the stunning renovation of its iconic Century Plaza hotel in LA, and Rianna Riego checks out the new spa
Q&A: Magdaleena Nikolov
The GM of spa, wellness and retail at Fairmont
Century Plaza talks to Jane Kitchen
Q&A: Mia Kyricos
The wellness leader talks about the creation of her new trademarked framework for the development and delivery of wellness interventions
Sponsored: Art of Cryo: raising the bar
Art of Cryo is complementing its high
performance cryotherapy range with advanced
new technology to enhance treatment benefits
Mystery Shopper: The Londoner
Our reviewer travels undercover to check out the spa offering at The Londoner – one of the most high profile openings in the capital in recent times
In a world where imbalance often accumulates quietly, Wildsmith unveils its newest
wellbeing innovation: Silent Loads, an approach designed to meet the needs of modern spa
guests with precision and depth. [more...]
The aim is for immersive wellness to make guests see and feel in a new way / Photo: Wund Holdings
What trends do you see driving change in wellness? From the music industry pivoting to wellness music to new technologies that capture our biometric data to create personalised, healing breathwork – wellness is undergoing a momentous digital transformation and we’re entering the era of adaptive, personalised digital wellbeing solutions.
You’re working with Thermengruppe Josef Wund to create new services – what will these look like? It’s all about immersive wellness. We’re developing a number of different technologies such as instructor-led or self-guided classes against changing, spectacular backdrops, delivered on room-sized curved screens in an immersive, biophilic environment. Also, multisensory chroma yoga, enabled with motion tracking-based feedback.
The aim is for immersive wellness to make guests see, feel and experience in a new and multisensory way.
Tell us more about Thermengruppe Josef Wund It’s a German company that designs, develops and operates resorts that combine the ancient tradition of thermal baths with the thrills of a modern waterpark, offering a wide range of wellness options.
This is all set within very large, architecturally spectacular, light-filled, biophilic spaces full of real vegetation and hundreds of giant palm trees.
The resorts offer guests a unique wellbeing proposition, a refuge from the stresses of daily life and a holiday destination that’s just a short commute away.
How did the partnership come about? When Thermengruppe Josef Wund approached us in early 2019, it was initially to develop a collaboration for our Virtual Reality SkySlide product, that we’d launched on the viewing platform of the Shard in London two years before (ww.spabusiness.com/skyslide).
However, during the course of our initial conversations, it quickly became clear that there was an opportunity to extend our collaboration beyond a single VR project, and look at ways of widening Wund’s core proposition beyond the physical and into the metaverse.
How did the partnership develop? Under the working title ‘Therme in your pocket’, we began a series of work-streams to establish and define how a digital ‘experiential’ layer could be added to their customer journey to meaningfully extend what was on offer in bricks and mortar; how we could enable digital and physical services for enhanced wellbeing, on site, on the go, at home, and at work.
At the discovery phase, we researched the market for digitally-enabled wellbeing services from blockbuster Apps such as Calm, as well as trends – for example, the quantified/optimised self and health metrics. What became clear, very quickly, was the need to differentiate the new offer, and the vision of the service that Wund would bring to the market from more generic wellbeing propositions.
What direction did you head in? We had to be clear about the specific and evolving needs and expectations of Wund’s core audience. Supported by a process of user and stakeholder interviews we arrived at a few key considerations. While the general wellness market has seen exponential growth, particularly in the shape of global, self-serve wellness apps – either VC-funded, or from tech incumbents – we wanted to ensure that Wund’s offer was more authentic, more connected with their physical sites and services and their local and regional audiences.
How are you making it different? With two million guests visiting Wund resorts annually, there’s a real gap for products and services that can meaningfully extend the company’s service offer and brand.
This presents a unique opportunity for a credible presence built on a well-established ecosystem within an otherwise increasingly crowded and generic wellness market.
The need for heightened focus on wellbeing has never been more acute. The pandemic has pushed narratives centre-stage that had been on the margins before, such as mental health, burnout, work-life balance, nutrition, and so on.
What will the new services look like? Digital therapeutics could offer digital-first wellness ‘prescriptions’, digital ‘treatments’ and curated content to alter mood and improve wellbeing. Our roadmap for Wund’s onsite and offsite programming will consist of two key principles:
1. Immersive Wellness Solutions These will deliver evidence-based wellness, combined with immersive technology to create interactive installations, experiential relaxation programmes and products.
2. The importance of community We want to support Wund’s community to transform anxiety, support healthier lifestyles, and improve productivity. This will happen by building a community around wellness and technology, supporting a transition from a transactional proposition to the consumer becoming partners in striving for attainable wellness.
And what effects will they have? These emerging ‘digital nutrition’ tools categorise content based on its proven ability to evoke six core emotions or mood groups: calm, confidence, connection, energy, focus, and happiness. These moods are linked to the activity of neurotransmitters and hormones such as GABA, dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, acetylcholine, and serotonin.
How do you see the future of digital wellness? Wellbeing needs redefining now that being digital has become a ‘thing’. We’re excited to be part of the redefinition of how meaningful immersive experiences can add value and a sense of wellbeing to people, wherever they’re at home, at work, on the go or at play. We think of it as wellbeing remixed for the age of the metaverse.
Read more from this issue of Spa Business magazine
View contents of Spa Business 2022 issue 2
Editor's letter: The wellness metaverse
We’re being handed a powerful new tool that will become a channel for creativity and innovation – pioneering wellness operators are already getting to grips with its exciting potential
Spa People: Michael Stusser
The wellness pioneer explains how he created an authentic Japanese bathing experience in the heart of the California hills
Spa People: Scot Toon
The Asia MD of The Pavilions Hotels & Resorts unveils the company's latest island development plans
Project preview: Off-grid
Svart Six Senses is set to open in Norway in 2024, and redefine the meaning of sustainable wellness tourism and regenerative travel
Sponsored: Myrtha Wellness: watertight expertise
Myrtha has transformed the world of aquatics over the last 60 years. Now it’s bringing its ingenuity-driven expertise to the international wellness industry
Interview: Rainer Usselmann
Tech business Happy Finish is bringing metaverse-based experiences to the wellness sector, working with Wund
Everyone's talking about: Menopause
From taboo to hot topic – how can spas offer treatments and a safe space for women to explore this often challenging phase of life?
Research: Bounceback
PwC says the US spa market was worth US$1bn in 2021 and growing well, according to data from ISPA's latest industry-wide study
First person: An icon reborn
Fairmont unveils the stunning renovation of its iconic Century Plaza hotel in LA, and Rianna Riego checks out the new spa
Q&A: Magdaleena Nikolov
The GM of spa, wellness and retail at Fairmont
Century Plaza talks to Jane Kitchen
Q&A: Mia Kyricos
The wellness leader talks about the creation of her new trademarked framework for the development and delivery of wellness interventions
Sponsored: Art of Cryo: raising the bar
Art of Cryo is complementing its high
performance cryotherapy range with advanced
new technology to enhance treatment benefits
Mystery Shopper: The Londoner
Our reviewer travels undercover to check out the spa offering at The Londoner – one of the most high profile openings in the capital in recent times
A recent survey by the UK Spa Association (UKSA) into the industry’s approach to cancer care
has revealed that almost half of participating respondents (46 per cent) are unaware that
cancer is a disability and guests with a cancer diagnosis must be given
Mexican operator, Solmar Hotels and Resorts, is hosting a series of events in celebration of
Global Wellness Day, including a Temazcal ceremony at its Playa Grande Resort and Spa in Los
Cabos.
Mandarin Oriental has announced a standalone residence brand, Mansions, which will debut at
Emirates Palace, Mandarin Oriental Mansions, Abu Dhabi, in 2029.
Four Seasons Resort The Nam Hai in Hoi An, Vietnam, has put together a Global Wellness Day
(GWD) agenda with activations rooted in nature and shaped by four pillars of Joy – in
alignment with the day’s theme #JoyMagenta.
The Global Wellness Summit (GWS) will celebrate its 20th anniversary at the 2026 event in
Phuket, Thailand, later this year with the theme: The Science, Art and Soul of Wellness.
Auko, an all-inclusive development, is opening in Phong Nha in Vietnam in Q3 2026, with a
series of 30 tented eco-lodges and wellness hospitality operations by Lumina Wellbeing.
Therme Manchester’s 28-acre development, which will include interconnected glass pavilions
that measure 65,000sq m, will be the largest bathing and wellbeing attraction in the world once
complete, according to prof David Russell, CEO of Therme UK.
Naples Beach Club, a Four Seasons Resort, has opened a 2,800sq m spa called The Sanctuary,
with the design and concept inspired by the Native American people that populated Florida’s
Southwest coast – the Calusa.
Swire Hotels’ luxury hospitality brand Upper House has revealed it will roll out its two-day
House of Healing retreats at its three hotels in Hong Kong, Chengdu and Shanghai.
In a world where imbalance often accumulates quietly, Wildsmith unveils its newest
wellbeing innovation: Silent Loads, an approach designed to meet the needs of modern spa
guests with precision and depth. [more...]
