Growing European Health Tourism Brand Serves Up a Double Dose of Hospitality

Ensana, a hospitality operator focusing on medical tourism, is aiming to nearly double in size over the next three years while increasing its service offerings.

The company began life in 2019, when Hungary's Danubius Hotels Group divided its city hotels and its medical spa facilities into two separate brands. Both are under the ownership umbrella of CP Holdings Ltd, a multinational investment company based in the UK.

Given the highly-fragmented nature of Europe’s medical spas, most of which are local and independently-owned and operated, the Ensana brand quickly became the largest medical spa operator on the continent. The company now manages 27 properties in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and the United Kingdom, many of which are located in Europe’s most historic spa towns.

For those not familiar with the concept of medical spas, they combine hotels and health facilities. Unlike the wellness hotel concept, which focuses more on relaxation and lifestyle programming (fitness classes, massages, saunas, etc.), medical spas have doctors on staff who provide treatments at on-site clinics over periods of one to four weeks.

Thermia Palace Hotel Piešťany, Slovakia

Petra Lelovska, Ensana vice president, provides some context: “A medical spa blends hospitality and medical treatment together. Doctors provide services, while guests are treated to the hospitality services they would expect at a typical hotel. In other words, we are a hotel brand focused on health.”

Traditionally, medical spas existed to help clients suffering from specific health issues. For more than a century, ailing patients have flocked to the medical spas of Eastern and Central Europe, which harness the healing properties of natural elements to treat a range of health conditions relating to muscles, bones, organs, metabolism and skin. Still today, Frank Halmos, Ensana chief executive officer, explains, “Medical spa operators use a combination of natural resources like thermal waters and mineral-rich mud with expert medical knowledge to offer treatments supporting the health of guests.”

Ensana Gives Medical Tourism a Shot in the Arm

For decades, most guests to these hospitality/medical hybrids would book two to four-week annual stays at a facility located in-country. That way, the multi-week visit could be covered by state insurance. However, as state budgets have tightened, the insurance reimbursement process has become less reliable, and medical spas are increasingly focusing on self-paying guests to keep things going. In the past, the rate of insurance reimbursed clients (usually domestic) versus free-payers was 80-20; now that ratio has been reversed. As a result, notes Halmos, “It’s not a long-term business for Ensana to accept insurance. So, we are focusing on the free market, looking to grow international business as we acquire more upper and upper upscale properties.” 

Halmos says the strategy is adding properties in countries where Ensana already operates, and then expanding to nearby countries with strong medical healing traditions, such as Austria, Germany and The Balkans (Greece and Bulgaria are high on the list). The company is also eyeing locations in further-flung places like Georgia, Kazakhstan and Egypt.

In 2020, Ensana opened the Buxton Crescent Health Spa Hotel. The historic building had languished for decades and it took 17 years to transform it.

Buxton  Crescent Health Spa Hotel

Halmos says that by the second or third quarter of 2023, he expects at least two new Ensana-branded properties to be open. By 2025, he says, the brand could have up to 45 facilities. According to Lelovska, the growth will come “mainly through hotel management contracts. We want to operate and not to buy—to be asset light and work with a portfolio of investors.”

Challenges and Changes

Ensana is also looking to grow its programming. As state insurance coverage gets phased down, the medical tourism market is facing the challenge of finding new, and in many cases, younger clients, who currently are looking more at developing healthy lifestyle practices rather than curing a particular condition. Some of these potential clients, particularly those from the North American market, may not even understand the European concept of a medical spa. Therefore, says Halmos, “The challenge for growth is increasing consumer awareness of what we offer–the proven health benefits of combining natural resources with medical knowledge.”

Due to demographic changes and the increased demand for preventive health programs, Ensana is expanding its offerings. “New health enhancement options will include lifestyle programming around issues such as weight loss, healthy eating, and de-stressing," Lelovska says.

The additions will blur some of the lines between what in North America is considered holistic wellness tourism (a term not highly esteemed in the European health spa community) and pure medical tourism. “We are looking to add more programming that allows for shorter stays, which will appeal to clients seeking more of a leisure focus for enhancing their health,” says Lelovska. The new concept will be unveiled next year at the Ensana on Margaret Island in Budapest and the Thermia Palace Spa Hotel located in Piešťany, Slovakia. After that, the plan is to offer similar “health enhancement” options at Ensana locations in Marienbad, Czech Republic and Buxton, England.

This article originally appeared in the December 9 edition of Hospitality Insights.

Hotels Use Technology and Design to Evolve the Healthy Room

This article originally appeared in the Skift New Luxury Newsletter, for which I am the chief correspondent.

---------------------

Can a hotel room make you healthier? The jury is still out, but judging from some recent experiments, there may be more than a nugget of truth to the idea.

A Wellness Room at the Four Seasons Los Angeles at Beverly Hills

Delos, which pioneered the term “wellness real estate”, introduced the concept of an uber-healthy hotel room at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada back in 2012. It is now bringing its Wellness Rooms to the Four Seasons Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. At the same time, Swissôtel is expanding its own version of a healthy room.

In all cases, the idea is to incorporate health-boosting technologies and ambient design elements to improve wellness. We are talking about things like special lighting to counter jet lag, aromatherapy, dawn simulator alarm clocks, special air purification systems and wisdom from Deepak Chopra. Okay, only Delos has Chopra on board. His knowledge, along with that of the Cleveland Clinic, has been incorporated into the programs offered at MGM and Four Seasons.

The Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills launched its partnership with Delos at the end of November 2017. Located on the hotel’s spa level, five wellness-themed guest rooms and two suites combine the latest technology from Delos, along with a stylish room aesthetic and the eco-chic features you would expect in L.A.

According to Michael Newcombe, general manager and chair of the company’s Global Spa and Wellness Task Force, the concept has potential to become ubiquitous.  Having a “room product dedicated to supporting a wellness-based lifestyle while on the road… is a choice that hoteliers will have to get used to.”  The concept will be tested through July 1, 2018, at which time guest feedback will be assessed. If guests give the thumbs up, the plan is to add more such rooms at the Beverly Hills property and beyond.

The Vitality Suite at Swissôtel Zurich 

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, a new wellness room concept is taking shape at Swissôtel. The Swissôtel Zurich is still tinkering with its Vitality Suite, which it introduced at the end of 2016. It’s an evolution of the company’s ongoing Vitality program aimed at “inspiring travelers to maintain an active and energized body and mind while on the road.” Until last year, that program had been focused on food and fitness offerings. But according to Lilian Roten, vice president of brand management for Swissôtel and Pullman,  “We realized that we had to bring this vitality focus into the guestroom… to package it up and build a room that would be the embodiment of vitality.”

And so, Swissôtel has reconfigured one of its conventional suites into a hardcore wellness sanctuary. Design elements include hardwood floors, soft color palettes, ergonomically-functional furniture, black-out blinds and bathrooms with spa features like aromatherapy and chromatherapy tubs.

There’s also a great deal of attention paid to allowing guests to personalize their experience. For example, company literature says, “In a first for the hotel industry, circadian light is accommodated on demand. Circadian light features allow light color to change, influencing the secretion of melatonin in the brain, helping travelers overcome jet-lag or lack of sunlight,” along with enhancing the quality of sleep.

The Wellbeing Wall in the Swissôtel Zurich's Vitality Suite 

Meantime, the built-in Wellbeing Wall offers guests a variety of training options, as it contains dumbbells, horizontal bars and cable-pull systems.  A multilingual cyber-trainer via a touch-screen monitor displays exercises geared towards strengthening, stretching, meditation and breathing.

There are plans to develop Vitality Rooms in North America and Asia. The Swissôtel Chicago is slated to be the first hotel outside of Switzerland to introduce the concept, most likely next year. In Asia, the company’s Singapore property will be the first to get an update.

“What we are looking into is evaluating what regional adaptations would be necessary to make rooms relevant for various markets,” said Roten.

At the same time, she notes, certain features will always be mandatory. Among them are floors uncovered by carpet; work areas with adjustable desks with options for standing or sitting; bathroom spa experiences; and a Wellbeing Wall. Inclusion of an air purification system will only be required in cities with air quality indexes above 50 (that’s you, Beijing).

While the Vitality Room per se will be exclusive to Swissotel, Roten says that other AccorHotels brands are likely to incorporate aspects of the concept over time.

Meantime, back in the United States, Delos Stay Well rooms have been introduced to half a dozen Marriott properties on the East Coast during the past year. Should Marriott and AccorHotels fully buy in, healthy rooms may prove to have legs beyond luxury brands.