MIND SPA
Many treatments
start in the Roman bathing suite with its plunge pools, Kneipp bath and heat experiences
adapted to suit individual needs. In fact the entire Vair experience feels more like tailor-made than off-the-peg. Having said this, both Bortolin and
Melpignano admit that their concept doesn’t appeal to all guests. “Some people don’t engage on the level we offer, they come to the spa for a massage because that’s what they want or they don’t expect anything else, so we offer these too,” says Melpignano. They also confess that the spa needs to contribute more than its current 5 per cent of hotel revenue, even though Vair already turns over more than €1m (US$1.1m, £0.7m) a year. Melpignano believes revenues will
increase by positioning Vair as a wellbeing destination in its own right rather marketing Borgo Egnazia as ‘a resort with a spa’. This shift in perception will also help to forge an upswing in winter business for the hotel, he says. “We offer wellness in the broadest
sense: good food, outdoor activities, culture, sea and spa,” says Melpignano. Together with Bortolin, he wants to see Vair’s deep and daring spa become a unique destination in the current surge in wellness tourism. ●
Sophie Benge is a journalist and author with a passion for wellness travel writing Email: sophie@
sophiebenge.com Phone: +44 7951 056609
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spabusiness.com issue 2 2015 ©CYBERTREK 2015
Bespoke couple’s package at Vair spa First-person experience: Sophie Benge
I
’m visiting Vair spa on a couple’s package that includes a bespoke mix of therapies. Side-by-side treatment tables in a double
suite this is not. In fact it’s just as much about being apart as being together, in line with the Vair philosophy that “moments of separation make time together more passionate”. It started with a 90-minute ritual in
the Roman bathing suite, a boudoir of flickering candles, plunge pools and saunas… in other words breathtakingly romantic (pictured above). Yet my lover was whisked away for
a salt scrub while I went through the saunas, pools and ice shower alone with my therapist. We switched around and then we snatched a few together- moments in the pool before our head-to-head (rather than side-by-side) very oily massage. I felt the full force of togetherness when our therapists linked our arms over our heads and massaged them as one, a frisson that returns as I write, weeks later. This marked the end of a day
which included other dynamic ways of exploring our relationship. We entered a room with a lone Bohemian figure (Giuseppe Ciciriello, a local psychologist and musician) sitting on a stool, covering his face with a hat.
Music therapist Giuseppe Ciciriello
It was up to us how we reacted – the silence was meant to enhance the energy between the three of us. What followed was 90 minutes of
animistic ritual: of dance, music and song. We swung and twirled each other and prodded and parried in a fencing sequence. We played tambourines, then sung an Apulian folk song which made my blood run cold (because I can’t sing) rather than the other way around! Yet I even asked to sing some more. The psycho-emotional release that the spa espouses clearly worked for me. The whole experience was about
learning when to create space between us and when to come together, exploring how we feel in a relationship through movement rather than words. Who knows what all this really means. The idea is not to analyse too deeply. Despite an argument on the flight
home, we both agreed our experience at Vair really did bring us closer together.
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