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Innovative and Traditional Austria

The sauna is an integral part of the spa experience throughout Austria, as evidenced here at Quellenhotel & Spa in Bad Waltersdorf.

Images

• Mavida Balance Hotel & Spa’s Blue Box

  Mavida Balance Hotel & Spa’s Blue Box

  Mavida Balance Hotel & Spa’s Blue Box stimulates the mind and body using a unique combination of vibrations, color and sound therapies.

  
• Quellenhotel & Spa's Styrian Medicine

  Quellenhotel & Spa's Styrian Medicine

  The Quellenhotel & Spa has developed its own medicinal treatments based on locally grown products, called traditional Styrian medicine.

  
• The Quellenhotel & Spa in Bad Waltersdorf

  The Quellenhotel & Spa in Bad Waltersdorf

  Austrian spas, such as the Quellenhotel & Spa in Bad Waltersdorf, are mainly resorts, allowing for several days of treatment from a holistic health approach.

  

Sidebars

• Austrian Spas By Hannelore Leavy

  Austrian Spas By Hannelore Leavy

  By Hannelore Leavy, Chair, Advisory Board, The Day Spa Association

  As any European country, Austria has its share of spas. “Bad” is the first word in many Austrians towns and villages, referring to “bath," meaning bathing and drinking the local mineral waters, which help many ailments and assist in recuperation from illnesses and accidents.

  Traditions live on at Austrian spas, even today. The Austrian health care system still believes in the healing powers of the mineral waters, and the two-or-three week “kur” is still be prescribed by family physicians and paid for by health insurance.

  Quite a number of Austrian spas have, as early as in the late 1970s, started to implement modern techniques, such as light and color therapy (Schloss Lebenberg in Kitzbuehel, Tyrol), and diet and exercise (Kurhotel in Warmbad Villach, Carinthia), which was unheard at European spas until the turn of the century. Other techniques include specialized fasting cures (Mayr Kur) and bio-farming, now called "organic," was already in place and thriving in the early 1980s in many villages throughout this small Alpine nation. Actually, Austria was, and still is, one of the top destinations for health and pleasure vacations for the active-minded, as well as the health-seeking traveler. Its spas are also a great starting place to consider complementary and alternative medicine, under the supervision of the spa doctor that presides over every spa village.

  For more information, contact the Austrian National Tourist Office.

• Retail Tip: Innovative and Traditional Austria

  Retail Tip: Innovative and Traditional Austria

  American spas can learn a thing or two on how to retail from Austrian spas. Retail sales have become a very important source of revenue for the Austrian spa; in fact, Austrian spas may rely more heavily on retail sales for revenue than American spas. Their product offerings are more extensive, and they work to build strong connections between treatment and retail. Austrian spas usually offer products in retail that they either use in treatment or to extend the benefits of the treatment. Also, ingestibles—primarily teas—are more common in retail because they use more dietary supplements, nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals in their treatments than most U.S. spas, although many American spas are beginning to move in this direction. Is this a retail direction from which your clientele—and your bottom line—could benefit?

By: Jonathan Selzer, PhD

Posted: August 23, 2010, from the September 2010 issue of Skin Inc. magazine.

Legend has it that even the Neanderthals would migrate up the mountains in the summer to enjoy the healing waters and pure alpine air in Austria. That was 40,000 years ago, and the country’s people have been at it ever since.

Some Austrian spas are incredibly remote. I’ve visited some, arriving into Kleinwalsertal by driving first into Germany and then back into Austria. It is certainly well worth the trip for the smaller spa experience. The larger spas are a little higher up the mountains toward Salzburg and Vienna, and are somewhat easier to reach; here you can find the top luxury resort spas. These include the Quellenhotel & Spa in Bad Waltersdorf; Schloss Fuschl Resort & Spa, built in the year 1450, which offers wellness and beauty treatments in a landscape straight out of The Sound of Music near Salzburg; Hotel Schloss Pichlarn, a five-star spa and luxury hotel that promotes wellness of mind, body and spirit in harmony with nature; and Palais Coburg, which has provided the Viennese people with spa services for the past 600 years. These are only a few of the many fabulous Alpine spas that appear on the Austrian landscape.

The Austrian difference

There are many kinds of spas in Austria. According to Miranda Allard, CEO of SpaAustria.com, there are small mountaintop spas and glamorous city spas, but what are hardly ever found are day spas. Austrian spas are mainly resorts, allowing for several days of treatment from a holistic health approach. Guests come to them not only for the spa services, but also for the associated outdoor or cultural activities. Winter snow and summer hikes draw guests from every continent.

Although the differences between American and Austrian destination spas are becoming fewer and fewer, there are some distinct trends. American destination spas traditionally have been more oriented toward diet, weight loss, fitness, behavior modification and beauty, and Austrian spas focus more on natural health, rejuvenation, wellness and healing. You can find everything from laugh therapy to yoga at an Austrian spa, and those that do offer beauty treatments do so in a holistic fashion. For example, the Quellenhotel & Spa has its Feng Shui Beauty Center, which approaches beauty from the outside and from within. Peter Moser, from Mavida Balance Hotel & Spa in Zell am See, categorizes the difference as: “In America, you work to get better; in Europe, you let others work on you to get better.”

What most distinguishes Austrian spas from others—besides the thin Alpine air—are the thermal springs, which are scattered throughout the mountainous land. Many cities include the word bad in their names, which in English means “bath.” Boiling up from the roots of the rocky crags, these hot mineral waters have double-action health benefits: natural minerals that make their way through the skin into the circulation, and natural heat that relaxes and stimulates simultaneously.

The old and the new