In an over-tired world that never slows down, meaningful rest has become both a luxury and a necessity. Each emotionally intelligent escape within the SLH Wellbeing Collection is deeply attuned to the needs of today’s restless traveller — offering thoughtful spaces to realign and recover beyond the spa.
Specially selected by a panel of experts within the wellness industry, including renowned spa editor, Susan D’Arcy, and BeSophro founder, Dominique Antiglio, these feel-good stays invite more than just a ‘press pause’ moment — they create a powerful sense of place to restore energy, reconnect with what matters, and build lasting resilience. Here, Susan D’Arcy shares her insights on some of the best wellbeing hotels for a mind-body reset.
Artificial intelligence might be dominating the global conversation now, but in the wellness world the focus is on its antithesis, emotional intelligence. EI is the elusive ingredient we need to navigate our personal and professional lives successfully. It influences everything from our ability to build strong relationships to making rational decisions and it’s essential for achieving the internal balance that’s our best chance for a long and healthy life. Yet connecting with our emotions is rapidly becoming a lost art. In our 24/7 switched-on world with its stressful swirl of economic uncertainty, climate anxiety and international conflict, finding the time, space and support network we need to develop our EI is increasingly difficult.
It means we need spaces dedicated to restfulness more than ever, so now is the perfect time for the Wellbeing Collection to launch. We’ve concentrated on a carefully curated handful of properties that display EI superpowers. These are inspiring places that have intuitive teams and exceptional locations that subtly set us on course for a 360-degree recharge, bolstering everything from our physical and mental to our emotional and creative states. These resorts go way beyond simply providing therapeutic treatments, nutritious dining, customised fitness and imaginative activities. They understand how to layer the process of improving health with practical advice for long-term sustainability and, best of all, delivering it with joy. Our wellbeing is a serious business but, choose one of these wellbeing-boosting stays, it can be an uplifting experience, too.
1. Namia River Retreat, Vietnam
Traditional Vietnamese medicine might date back to the 14th-century, but it has remained largely under the radar until the arrival of this pioneering spa. At Namia River Retreat, guests can visit Vietnamese healers in their homes and Vietnamese wellbeing practices are brought to light, including duong sinh, the country’s spin on breathwork, and dien chan, a form of facial reflexology. While celebrating its heritage, this resort is thoroughly modern too, with cutting-edge interiors designed with sophisticated circadian rhythm lighting systems that gently reinforce night and day cycles to remind guests when they should be awake and asleep.
In addition to the standard luxury hammam, sauna, cold plunge and hydrotherapy, there are daily 90-minute wellness rituals for all guests, wishing-tree ceremonies, paddle-boat trips through local waterways and bicycle tours through the nipa palm forests. An added bonus is Namia’s location on a quiet and lush islet close to the UNESCO-protected port city of Hoi An. The city is quaint but prone to overcrowding, so being able to take the short complimentary boat shuttle into Hoi An for its famous lantern festival and then escape back to serenity will do wonders for your wellbeing.
2. eriro, Austria
This super-stylish holistic hideaway in a remote nook of the Tyrolean Alps takes a deliberately unstructured approach to wellness to ensure that each guest unfolds their wellbeing journey in a way that feels logical and comfortable for them. The location of eriro plays a significant part in this process: it teeters on the edge of a mountain, surrounded by stress-busting forests and mirror-calm lakes and enveloped in restorative silence.
This subtle hands-off method is deceptively persuasive, so while you could stick to the conventional yoga classes, daily breathwork sessions and forest bathing after a soak in its trio of stunning pools, a stint in the spruce and Finnish saunas, a splash under the waterfall rock shower and time listening to sound waves that correspond to the frequency of the earth and induce deep relaxation, you may surprise yourself by agreeing to barefoot hikes across moss-covered woodlands and signing up to learn snowflake-reading techniques. Meditation here looks similarly sideways so you’ll be encouraged to take a pottery class and find your mind clears of all thoughts as you concentrate on your creation — which will be fired and sent to your home as your favourite-ever souvenir. It’s such an enchantingly natural environment that you’ll soon forget there are no TVs in the bedrooms and be pleased that the WiFi is limited and on request only.
3. Euphoria Retreat, Greece
This sophisticated holistic resort in the Peloponnese has fused the teachings of the Greek physician Hippocrates, the father of modern Western medicine, with Traditional Chinese Medicine and the latest technological advances to create wellness programmes that are results driven but also uniquely relaxing. The impressive range of options at Euphoria Retreat include fitness weeks that concentrate on green therapy, with inspiring al fresco workouts in amphitheatres and olive groves as well as in-depth medical testing to produce a personalised step-by-step blueprint about how to improve your longevity prospects. A central pillar of its award-winning spa is its collaboration with Dr George Leon, an internationally renowned metabolic medicine expert, who has helped the resort’s chefs devise a diet that is not only delicious and rooted in Greek cuisine but also aims to guard against developing serious health risks such as cardiovascular disease, strokes and diabetes.
This place is about beauty too, and the four-storey spa complex has won countless awards for its soothing design, which incorporates monastic arches and vaulted ceilings and a show-stopping hydrotherapy pool, with a vast domed ‘spaceship’ anchored centre stage into which you dive for a sense of total release. The natural surroundings are no less stunning. You can walk from the yoga deck into the retreat’s own private pine-scented forest on the edge of the UNESCO-protected Byzantine town of Mystras. The majestic Mount Taygetus is also on its doorstep where you can hike all day and often not see another person. This place offers a rare combination of soulful escape and razor-sharp expertise.
4. Castle Hot Springs, USA
The Sonoran Desert is a wonderfully soulful location whose calming qualities are best appreciated while soaking in Castle Hot Spring’s healing pools fed by a natural thermal spring creek. And while contrast therapy may be the 21st-century’s latest wellness craze, people have been quietly practising it at this desert oasis since the 1890s by wallowing in the warm waters, then dunking in the icy depths. Breathe, relax, repeat and feel your cares, aches and pains start to melt away.
There are 1,100 acres of hiking and biking for restorative exercise in nature, daily yoga and mindful activities such as painting and gardening that also connect you to this pristine pocket of nature, as well as the white-knuckle option of tackling Arizona’s first via ferrata. Reward those tired limbs with an excellent massage or a Watsu treatment, a water-based stretching session, if you can’t get enough of this H2O. A tour of the onsite farm is worthwhile too, to join the dots between what happens in the field and ends up on your fork, and although digital detox is not enforced, the WiFi password, RUsureUwant2, leaves you in little doubt what the team would prefer. By the end of a stay, you’ll feel refreshed and raring to hike up Salvation Peak one last time.
5. Miramonti Boutique Hotel, Italy
Swap the hustle of everyday life for a wellbeing boost immersed in the wall-to-wall serenity of South Tyrol’s spectacular mountains. The design of Miramonti Boutique Hotel’s spa masterfully capitalises on its pristine location, offering breathtaking views while bobbing in its heated pools and hot tubs, and when heating up in the glass-fronted forest sauna or chilling out in its relaxation lounges. This is a setting that effortlessly peels away stress and anxiety and encourages a care-free connection to nature.
For the ultimate five-star version of a back-to-basics reset, arrange a sleep-out in a luxurious Land Rover rooftop tent at a magical spot just a short distance from the main resort. You are waved off with a delicious picnic hamper for dinner and wood for a campfire to encourage late-night conversation or quiet contemplation. You can dial up the white-knuckle fun with paragliding and perilous hikes across a local via ferrata, or keep the mood more grounded with horse-drawn sleigh rides, hot stone massages and meals at one of the resort’s three restaurants where the regional cucina and world cuisine is overseen by a Michelin-starred chef. Scenes from the James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, were filmed around the resort and you’ll be sure to leave feeling stirred, into action.
Discover the full Wellbeing Collection — from a restored Portuguese rice farm rooted in grain-powered rituals to a Himalayan hideaway where you can learn the art of meditation alongside monks.
These are inspiring places that have intuitive teams and exceptional locations that subtly set us on course for a 360-degree recharge, bolstering everything from our physical and mental to our emotional and creative states.
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