I've been thinking about how to present Vision Spa Retreat's ideas to a gathering for meeting planners who are interested in exploring ways in which the events they organize can support and promote care for the environment. These professionals are special hosts who endeavor to provide settings and services for clients who are seeking to do 'good' business.
They create the background against which this can happen as smoothly, comfortably and effectively as possible. In doing so they have the opportunity to influence the choices of their customers in the direction of consumption designed only to make an impression or to model more thoughtful approaches to providing health and hospitality that may influence the whole context of how we do business.
- Meeting and event organizers: what if you could bring people together to really make a difference?
- Business owners: are you looking for ways to integrate health and environmental concerns?
- Spa owners: are you looking for a life-sustaining vision that extends beyond the bottom-line?
Below, I argue for the positive potential in integrating spa culture and corporate culture. From think-tanks to sabbaticals, we could make all our gatherings ones in which we are seeking to redress the imbalance that has become clear in ways of living and making a living. The details (the what and how) are important but so also is having a vision of why.
Green: just a trend or a vision in action?
Green has become a buzz word in our culture, and in the world of spa it has been especially popular - ecoluxury destination spas are springing up all over the world and the US now has its own Green Spa Network. Organic beauty products and nature-based images abound. It has been reasonable to ask whether this is just another marketing trend or a real shift in values.
In the current economic climate, Green will become even more strongly linked with the need for Sustainability, and it is this that might help us make the transition to a more authentic and realistic expression of our ideals. Even so, changing our culture's unsustainable habits is a challenge. There is a wealth of information about what is wrong and what can be done to put it right.
To carry this through we'll need an inspiring vision or mission, one that expresses values and needs that are aligned with and truly supportive of both personal and planetary health. I believe that spa, in particular spa-retreat, has the potential to model this vision in action. Historically spa culture and human commerce (meeting for business purposes) have been strongly interlinked.
Long before colonization of the New World, Native Americans gathered at thermal mineral springs for physical health, spiritual, and social purposes. In Europe, the Romans were cultivating spas as places for both play and politics. And in ancient Greece, people went on spa sabbaticals to receive healing dreams from the gods that offered solutions to otherwise intractable problems.
Our own society is now recognizing the value of adding spa culture to its social and business settings, to meetings and events. It's an interweaving that, if fully realized, could provide us with solutions to our own personal, social, and environmental issues by immersing us in an inclusive and informal setting where all three aspects of human life are recognized as being inseparable.
A contemporary spa industry is emerging that provides not only therapeutic treatments, but also a broad range of activities for relaxation and renewal. Considering spa as solely pampering or self-indulgent is to overlook its value as a regenerative and socially re-creative service. Meanwhile, new business management techniques are including spirituality and promoting wellbeing.
Spa culture enriches corporate culture
Spa culture enriches corporate culture by recognizing that self-renewal balances mental, physical and emotional intelligences. It is an effective way to help employees manage stress levels by enhancing attitude and sense of calm and increasing alertness and interest in their work. Employers who offer this are likely transparent and responsive to both employees and customers.
The modern spa industry epitomizes innovation, creativity and service. In the arena of health and wellbeing, it is on the forefronts of advanced technologies as well as promoting the value of natural systems and products. Its customers often want the best of both worlds, and it must find a way to strike this balance without making a nonsense of it's claim on promoting true health.
And true heath is irrefutably dependent on a healthy environment. This is another aspect to spa culture that gives it the potential to be a powerful tool for positive change in a climate of concerns for planetary health as well as people's health. As a business, it is well-positioned to redress our attitudes towards and appreciation of natural resources and settings.
Not only is our own wellbeing supported and enhanced by nature and its resources, but through truly recognizing and valuing this dependency we will in turn protect and preserve the natural world. Spa culture could demonstrate this link by showing how it is possible, necessary, and effective to integrate all aspects of self-care with environmental concerns.
Whether spas, and the businesses associated directly or indirectly with them, will notice and take up this opportunity remains to be seen. What will make the difference, in my view, is not only a clear sense of why this matters and what to do, but also an inspiring vision that invites the participation of everyone involved and offers everyone equal benefit.
If spa is cultivated as a purely elitist and vanity-driven service, which strives to create ever-more expensive and gimmicky products and treatments, this opportunity will be missed. If instead, it is celebrated as a way of balancing ourselves as individuals, and feeling connected with others and with our environments, then a real leadership role in efforts to safeguard our future is possible.
Vision Spa Retreat offers a consultancy service aimed primarily at entrepreneurs who are interested in creating venues and providing services in line with an authentic spa-retreat ethic.
More on Sara Firman's speaker services.
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