Condé Nast Traveler Spa Guide winners for 2023 have been announced and these top-level retreats, medi-clinics, health centers, and slick spas are amazing.
Palazzo Fiuggi, Italy
Palazzo Fiuggi is an art nouveau beauty on a spectacular hilltop not far from Rome. Glorious architecture hides understated, calming bedrooms, many overlooking romantic wooded landscapes and Fiuggi’s medieval old town. The mansion is a high-tech wellness retreat.
Most guests’ wellness journey begins with a holistic health assessment courtesy of a bio-resonance test, which measures heart rate and analyses brain health, immunity levels, digestive efficiency, and endocrine systems. The team then customizes accordingly, but their recommendations will always include daily dips into Fiuggi’s unique selling point, its curative waters. Guests are prescribed regular floats in three super-buoyant thalassotherapy baths, where Fiuggi’s finest H2O is laced with sea salt, oils, and therapeutic minerals.
A weight-loss concept, for those who want it, is overseen by a chef who runs a three-starred Michelin restaurant. Not only that, but this spa is in carb-loving Italy, and the menus feature pasta and ice cream. The maestro behind these calorie-controlled feasts is Heinz Beck, executive chef at La Pergola in Rome and the spa’s nutritional wizard. Beck has worked with Fiuggi’s David Della Morte Canosci to create sumptuous but science-backed dishes packed with essential nutrients that boost immunity and general health and achieve safe weight loss without the usual pangs of hunger.
Soneva Jani, Maldives
Feeling well has been at the core of Jani’s being since its 2016 launch. The island, with its cornflower sky, deep green jungle, marshmallowy white sands, technicolor reefs, and calming fragrance of sun-warmed pandan leaves, is well-being in essence. But now there is Soneva Soul, where a new approach to wellness represents a shift from holistic-inspired treatments and movements to encompass something deeper and more ambitious.
Soneva Soul’s treatments skew widely across the clinical and complementary: from electrocardiograms to sound therapy; plasma therapy to Tok Sen massage from northern Thailand (which uses wooden mallets and pegs to hammer muscle knots). There’s nutrient IV therapy, a sleep program for insomniacs, cryotherapy, ozone therapy, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Micro-needling facials, red-light therapy, Vietnamese pressure-point facials, and medicinal mushrooms are all on offer. Rasul mud therapy, a hammam, and Wim Hof are in the pipeline. At the core of the spa, there is a juice bar and a perfectly equipped gym for classes including barre, functional fitness, and free movement techniques.
Rakxa, Thailand
Set on the lush conservation-area island of Bang Krachao, known as the green lung of Bangkok (the city is an hour’s drive away), RAKxa opened in December 2020 and represents a significant step forward in healthcare. This is an East-meets-West retreat, that attracts a notably global clientele. They not only consult mainstream medical doctors at the VitalLife Scientific Wellness Clinic – all wood, stone, glass, and ceramics – but also Ayurvedic, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Traditional Thai Medicine (TTM) doctors at the RAKxa Jai Holistic Wellness Center, along with a team of complementary therapy specialists.
RAKxa also has ineffably lovely Thai service, serene but quickly efficient, to enhance its appeal. And of special interest to anyone grimacing at the cost of private healthcare at home is that, as VitalLife’s parent company is Bangkok’s Bumrungrad International Hospital, this is also somewhere to prepare for or recover from a procedure in the most pleasurable way possible.
Park Igls, Austria
Underpinned by the principles of Modern Mayr Medicine – which believes that a poorly functioning gut is the catalyst for a vast array of physical and emotional malaises – it offers clinical clout combined with top-caliber holistic healthcare. The goal is to allow the digestive tract to rest and then repair. No metaphysics and nothing that hasn’t been tried, tested, and scientifically verified.
Regular medical massage is the backbone of bodywork, although the Rolfing (manipulating connective tissue) is superb; practitioners Hannelore Gartner and Josef Schöffthaler have fanatical followings. The gut-repairing diet remains at the heart of the process alongside the “chew, chew, chew” eating rule. However, head chef Markus Sorg spins local organic produce into tiny taste explosions: thumb-sized columns of venison with jus; skate wing and sea urchin caviar with wasabi foam. The personal trainers are sports scientists, sports therapists, or physiotherapists, and the panoramic gym is impressive. There are more than 50 group classes on rotation, including trampolining and aqua jogging. This is what first-rate integrated healthcare looks like.
