Wellness

The best hotels do more than provide a beautiful room and a comfortable bed. They influence the way you experience a destination. My recent journey through the Tirol was a perfect example.

Over three nights, I stayed at three very different properties: Wellness Residence Alpenrose, Hotel Post Lermoos and Alpen Resort Schwarz. Each hotel offered its own interpretation of Alpine hospitality, yet what connected them was a shared understanding that wellness is not simply an amenity. It is a way of life.

“Focus on a point at the other side of the lake and step-in, you can do it” boomed Philipp Steiner, a cold-water therapist and former ski-racer, who was already submerged in the icy lake, waiting for his new recruits to join him. 

Ripples of near-freezing water radiated-out from around the ancient timber boat station, our entry point to the only pocket of water not frozen over by thick ice. 

Flying directly into the tiny airport of Bolzano from Gatwick with SkyAlps makes the journey into South Tyrol unusually simple. Within half an hour of landing you are driving through the Val d’Ega, its meadows and forests framed by the jagged peaks of the Rosengarten and Latemar. Nestled in this landscape is Engel Ayurpura, the first dedicated Ayurveda hotel in the Dolomites and one of only two in Italy.

Sitting in the world’s largest cider barrel sauna - Mostfassl – with fifty other naked strangers may seem at the very least, alternative. Yet, in Upper Austria, this is just another way to experience one of the region’s most popular products.  

“You look nervous?” stated the doctor’s assistant at AquaCity, as I stood beside the cryotherapy chamber waiting to enter; my answer was unequivocally “yes!”. The resort is one of Slovakia’s premier health and well-being complexes based in Poprad, a city nestled beneath the High Tatras Mountains.

The pioneer of ingestible wellness. Established in 2014 by Elle Macpherson, WelleCo is an Australian born company, founded as a result of Elle’s own personal wellness journey and discoveries. WelleCo’s carefully curated collection of wellness solutions is underpinned by Elle’s philosophy that, with wellness, you can live the life you’d only dreamed of living. Feeling strong and alive, capable and confident.

To spa or not to spa, that is the question. Now, Ludwig van Beethoven and Marie Curie might not automatically spring to mind as spa goers. Born almost 100 years apart, one of the most recognised and influential of all composers and the double Nobel Prize winner frequented spa towns in what is now modern day Czech Republic, though for very different reasons.