Up until now, my strangest hotel spa experience ever has been when I stayed at a Marriott property in China, and the spa therapist tried to aggressively “hard sell” off-menu spa services. Despite repeated denials, the hard selling, and heavy inner thigh rubbing, continued. Well, I think I just had an even stranger — or at least more unpleasant — massage, and it borders on comical…
Before I get into this, let me of course acknowledge that this is all a first world problem, so please don’t take this too seriously. There are obviously much bigger issues in the world.
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We’re currently staying at a beautiful boutique property, and the spa menu had been placed in our welcome pamphlets. Prices for spa treatments at luxury properties have gone through the roof over the years, and nowadays it’s not uncommon to see hour-long massages costing $200-300. So we were downright delighted when we saw that the 50-minute massages were going for €85, and there’s a 20% discount if you have your appointment before 2PM, bringing the cost down to €68.
Of course you can get cheaper massages on the streets of Thailand, but for a real spa in a nice hotel in Europe, that’s about as reasonable pricing as I’ve seen (especially in a culture where a 20% tip isn’t expected).
So I decided to go to the spa shortly after checking in to make appointments for the whole family. We had a very active trip up until this point, and relaxing a bit sounded nice. We booked Ford and his mom appointments the first day, I booked myself an appointment the next day, and I booked my dad an appointment for the day after that, just based on our schedules.
We all opted for the “sport & vitality massage,” described as “designed to relieve tension after sporting activities and provide maximum support for muscle regeneration.” Sounds great!
Ford was first into the lion’s den… I mean, to the spa… and as he finished, he sent me the below text.
As he described it, he asked for deep pressure at the beginning of the massage, and then the masseuse spent 50 minutes basically just rubbing his body with oil, with the lightest pressure imaginable. He quickly ran his hand over my arm to give an example of the pressure.
A great solo travel tip spotted this week on One Mile at a Time.
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