Wellness isn’t a trend in the hospitality industry, it’s a lifelong commitment, with many operators making long-term plans. But what does that mean exactly? Are you thinking of hot stone massage therapy, a heated spa pool, and a sleep app or, like lifestyle hospitality company sbe (and its founder Sam Nazarian), are you thinking a little deeper?
Together with entrepreneur Tony Robbins, sbe have just launched The Estate, and are calling it a “revolutionary luxury hospitality and residential ecosystem anchored in the world of preventative medicine, AI and longevity.”
They ask you not to think of it as a hospital, which is there to fix you, but as a retreat to prevent you breaking down in the first place.
With a focus on physical wellness, it is planning 15 global hotels and residences and 10 urban longevity centres by 2030, all aimed at bringing high-quality preventative medicine into the hospitality sector.
It sounds great, but I think someone, somewhere, could do better. Allow me to elaborate.
For several years, I worked in the therapy services department of a private psychiatric hospital setting. I not only saw people for individual therapy but also ran three coaching programmes – developed by myself from scratch – on the gen psych/wellbeing programme.
Being a hospital, the site contained bedded wards for mainly NHS referred residents. However, there were also two private wards, and it was the residents of those that had access to the programme.
The private wards were of a higher standard than the NHS wards and, were it not for the water heating problems and the dodgy wi-fi, the setup was not too dissimilar to that of a hotel setting.
Residents would stay either a few days, or a couple of weeks and, sometimes, a month or more. They had access to a programme that included a variety of psychotherapeutic modalities, as well as clinical hypnotherapy, art therapy, nutritional therapy and yoga.
“What if the hospitality industry adopted this model?” I often mused. “Not only, adopted it, but also did it better?”
The main problem with a wellness retreat is that whilst you are there, receiving the yoga, the whirlpools, the massage therapy and what-have-you, you feel great. You feel amazing. However, that feeling usually lasts until lunchtime on your first day back at work in that stressful environment you were retreating away from in the first place.
But, what if you could provide a retreat that taught skills borrowed from psychotherapy, from coaching and more? What if your guests could use those skills on their return to work, thereby maintaining that post-holiday glow long after their stay? And what if, like The Estate, you went down the preventative route, rather than the reparative?
What if top-tier corporate organisations could send select members of their staff to such retreats, not after they’ve burned them out but long before, teaching them not only wellness but also coping strategies? I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and it's not for nothing that my latest book carries a sub-title teasing simple ideas to do enhance your wellness and resilience.
Another asset to the hospital that I worked in was that it sat on the edge of a small woodland and several large meadows. Staff and guests made good use of both.
Nature is essential to our mental health and wellbeing. This is known. Which is why biophilia is an essential part of any wellness programme.
Spirituality is also on the menu, partly because there is an increasing demand for psycho-spiritual wellbeing practices and partly because, as the Austrian American author and physicist once said, “ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected because, deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness.”
The Estate is going to cater to physically preventative wellness but, if anyone would like to speak to me about psycho-spiritually preventative wellness, I have lots to say on the subject. Plus, I’ve already got three programmes that, with a little bit of a refresh, would be more than good to go.
Daniel Fryer is a wellbeing consult with more than 20 years of experience. He is the author of the award winning How to Cope with Almost Anything with Hypnotherapy: simple ideas to enhance your wellbeing and resilience (Bloomsbury)and the best-selling The Four Thoughts That F*ck You Up . . . and how to fix them (Penguin Random House). He has been on stage at the HOSPACE conference twice (as both guest speaker and panel moderator). He provides workshops and webinars to a variety of corporate clients and sectors, including hospitality, and provides content and strategy to a popular mental health app, Mind Ease. He is a member of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD), which is probably why he is currently living in a forest in the Southwest of France.
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