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Top right: The idea is to position Borgo Egnazia as a wellbeing destination in its own right rather than as a resort with a spa Left and bottom right: The privately-owned resort in Puglia, south Italy, has been built using local stone to give it a sense of place


THE RESULT IS A HOLISTIC, REFLECTIVE AND PERSONAL SPA EXPERIENCE THAT DIFFERS RADICALLY FROM THE COOKIE-CUTTER CONCEPTS OF SO MANY HOTEL SPAS


the five years since it opened among the olive groves between Bari and Brindisi. The 1,800sq m (19,375sq ft)


underground Vair spa ticks the luxury list of flickering candlelight, trickling water, natural textures and cocooning silence, beautifully. There’s even a suite of Roman bathing facilities with a tepidarium, caldarium, Kneipp bath, plunge pools and marble scrub room that can be booked exclusively for couples. It’s highly indulgent by any standards. Yet this self-named ‘experimental spa’ also hints at a new concept for hotels – an unusual offering which may not have come to life if it wasn’t for the trust and bravery of hotel owner, Aldo Melpignano, who gave his director free reign with her creativity. When Bortolin first met Melpignano through personal contacts, she was


expecting to develop ‘a standard spa’, as she had done in her previous spa director roles across Italy – most recently at Bagni di Pisa in Tuscany. But Melpignano wanted something that embraced ‘natural’ and ‘Puglia’, something that gave his guests a sense of place and offered them genuine sincerity. So when Bortolin came on board a year


prior to opening, she took his wishes to heart and tapped into the energy of the surrounding landscape: an earthy, ancient terrain of olive and lemon groves, hot sun and sea breezes. “Egnazia is like a dream. My ideas changed when I came here. I had to follow my inspiration,” says Bortolin, who exudes honesty and passion in everything she does in relation to Vair. On a prosaic level, this led to the development of products formulated


around olive oil and prickly pear, an antioxidant-rich oil from the prickly pear cactus that grows prolifically in Puglia, as well as lavender and lemon. On a more profound level, Bortolin


delved into Apulian culture and wove local folklore with healing therapies and psychosomatics, which are her personal areas of interest and study. In the three-day Tarant ‘tarantula


therapy’ programme, for example, women rediscover their feminine side and are empowered with music and movement, yoga, psycho-emotional sessions with intuitive healers and holistic treatments. The programme is based on the Apulian tarant ritual for releasing the ‘sting’ that, according to myth, is metaphorically injected into women by the men in their lives!


©CYBERTREK 2015 spabusiness.com issue 2 2015 71


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