The best spas in the world
These are the Condé Nast Traveller Spa Guide winners for 2023: the top-level retreats and medi-clinics, the most-results-driven health centres and the slickest spas. Wellbeing has never been more at the forefront of our minds than now, and there have never been more excuses to exercise wellness on a daily basis. From sound baths in the Maldives to recovery lounges in Napa Valley, 2023 is set to see boundary-pushing wellness trends in the travel world, and, closer to home, mental health retreats in the UK are becoming an increasingly common holiday break. For now, explore some of the world's most incredible spas, as awarded by Condé Nast Traveller in this year's Spa Awards.
The 2023 winners
Nathalie KragWinner: Medical Miracles 2023
Palazzo Fiuggi, Italy
High-tech water cures amid elegance
Palazzo Fiuggi is an art nouveau beauty on a spectacular hilltop not far from Rome. Glorious architecture hides understated, calming bedrooms, many overlooking romantic wooded landscapes and Fiuggi’s medieval old town. A £26 million reinvention masterminded by the owners of Forte Village in Sardinia transformed the mansion into this high-tech wellness retreat.
Most guests’ wellness journey begins with a holistic health assessment courtesy of a bioresonance test, which measures heart rate and analyses brain health, immunity levels, digestive efficiency and endocrine systems. The team then customise accordingly, but their recommendations will always include daily dips into Fiuggi’s USP: its curative waters. The town has been famous since the Middle Ages, when Pope Boniface VIII and Michelangelo believed its healing springs cured their kidney stones. Guests are prescribed regular floats in three super-buoyant thalassotherapy baths, where Fiuggi’s finest H2O is laced with sea salt, oils and therapeutic minerals.
Palazzo Fiuggi is a dream proposition: a weight-loss concept, for those who want it, overseen by a chef who runs a three-Michelin-starred restaurant. Not only that, but this spa is in carb-loving Italy, and the menus feature pasta and ice cream. The maestro behind these calorie-controlled feasts is Heinz Beck, executive chef at La Pergola in Rome and the spa’s nutritional wizard. Beck has worked with Fiuggi’s David Della Morte Canosci to create sumptuous but science-backed dishes packed with essential nutrients that boost immunity and general health, and achieve safe weight loss without the usual pangs of hunger. Judging from the agreeable hum of happy diners, they’ve succeeded. Sophie Dening
Healing Holidays can arrange a seven-night Fit & Well programme from £4,839pp, including transfers, full board and treatments. Exclusive offer Book a seven-night programme and only pay for six.
Dan KullbergWinner: Bring the Family 2023
Soneva Jani, Maldives
An ambitious approach to wellness pairs cutting-edge therapy with sumptuous surrounds
Feeling well has been at the core of Jani’s being since its 2016 launch. The island, with its cornflower sky, deep green jungle, marshmallowy white sands, technicolour reefs and calming fragrance of sun-warmed pandan leaves, is wellbeing in essence. But now there is Soneva Soul, where a new approach to wellness represents a shift from holistic-inspired treatments and movements to encompass something deeper and more ambitious.
Soneva Soul’s treatments skew widely across the clinical and complementary: from electrocardiograms to sound therapy; plasma therapy to Tok Sen massage from northern Thailand (which uses wooden mallets and pegs to hammer muscle knots). There’s nutrient IV therapy, a sleep programme for insomniacs, cryotherapy, ozone therapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Micro-needling facials, red-light therapy, Vietnamese pressure-point facials and medicinal mushrooms are all on offer. Rasul mud therapy, a hammam and Wim Hof are in the pipeline. At the core of the spa, there is a juice bar and a perfectly equipped gym for classes including barre, functional fitness and free movement techniques. Visiting teachers include the likes of Joe Wicks, a ray of sunshine who was there at the same time as me.
A key pillar of parenting, which most of us struggle with, is self-care. Jani offers the chance for this in spades. Children are free to explore The Den, the kids’ club of dreams unveiled last summer, with its pool, zip line, waterfall, pinball machines and over-water ping-pong. And to roam the island’s jungly interior and pluck treats from the free ice-cream and chocolate parlours. The drama of the over-water villas, with their glass floors and slides whooshing into baby-blue water, brings out the child in parents, too. Cutting-edge therapies aside, what more health-enhancing pricelessness is there than this? Lydia Bell
Healing Holidays can arrange a seven-night stay from £6,599pp, including flights, transfers and half board.
Chris SchalkxWinner: Holistic Heaven 2023
Rakxa, Thailand
Comprehensive, clinically led retreat that also folds in Asian medicine
Set on the lush conservation-area island of Bang Krachao, known as the green lung of Bangkok (the city is an hour’s drive away), RAKxa opened in December 2020 and represents a significant step forward in healthcare. This is an East-meets-West retreat, that attracts a notably global clientele. They consult mainstream medical doctors at the VitalLife Scientific Wellness Clinic – all wood, stone, glass and ceramics – but also Ayurvedic, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Traditional Thai Medicine (TTM) doctors at the RAKxa Jai Holistic Wellness Center, along with a team of complementary therapy specialists.
RAKxa was originally planned to be just a clinic with accommodation: two grand three-bedroom residences and 60 airy one-bedroom villas, a third with a lakeside pool. However, that plan changed abruptly pre-launch. Five years ago, CEO Dusadee Tancharoen, then 46, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. What especially shocked her, she says, was that health-check blood tests had always come back “within the range”, as mainstream doctors say. After treatment, taking a deep dive into complementary therapies to restore her health, she visited top medispas to “see what the wellness industry was doing”, and thought she spotted a gap in the market. “I loved them all,” she says. “But most focused mainly on either the medical or the complementary. So we decided RAKxa should combine both. We are Thai, we have 5,000-year-old traditions of Asian medicine to call on.”
RAKxa also has ineffably lovely Thai service, serene but quickly efficient, to enhance its appeal. And of special interest to anyone grimacing at the cost of private healthcare at home is that, as VitalLife’s parent company is Bangkok’s Bumrungrad International Hospital, this is also somewhere to prepare for or recover from a procedure in the most pleasurable way possible. Adriaane Pielou
Healing Holidays can arrange a five-night Rest & Reset programme from £4,135pp, including transfers, full board and treatments. Exclusive offer Stay for five nights or more and enjoy a complimentary upgrade to a pool villa.
Fred EinkemmerWinner: Destination Health 2023
Park Igls, Austria
No-nonsense gut-reset supremo in an alpine setting
Park Igls is as clear as the stern Austrian Alps that surround it. Underpinned by the principles of Modern Mayr Medicine – which believes that a poorly functioning gut is the catalyst for a vast array of physical and emotional malaises – it offers clinical clout combined with top-calibre holistic healthcare. The goal is to allow the digestive tract to rest and then repair. No metaphysics and nothing that hasn’t been tried, tested and scientifically verified.
It is impossible to forget that this is a medical resort, albeit a comfortable one. This isn’t the place for glamorous Instagram reels. The guests are mainly German-speaking with a sprinkling of Brits, and an impressive 73 per cent are returners. Igls is starting to attract a younger clientele, drawn by the impressive exercise facilities and the chance for a reboot. Medical director Dr Peter Gartner heads a team of four GPs who orchestrate psychologists, sports scientists, physiotherapists and medical massage therapists, with a roster of consultants across most specialisms.
Regular medical massage is the backbone of bodywork, although the Rolfing (manipulating connective tissue) is superb; practitioners Hannelore Gartner and Josef Schöffthaler have fanatical followings. Park Igls has looked critically at Mayr, streamlining, expanding and discarding. Kinesiology for diagnostics has been shown the door as it was unreliable. The gut-repairing diet remains at the heart of the process alongside the “chew, chew, chew” eating rule. However, head chef Markus Sorg spins local organic produce into tiny taste explosions: thumb-sized columns of venison with jus; skate wing and sea urchin caviar with wasabi foam. The personal trainers are sports scientists, sports therapists or physiotherapists, and the panoramic gym is impressive. There are more than 50 group classes on rotation, including trampolining and aqua jogging. This is what first-rate integrated healthcare looks like: comprehensive and compassionate, assured and beautifully executed. Jane Alexander
Healing Holidays can arrange a four-night Detox Short Break programme from £1,619pp, including transfers, full board and treatments.
Jonny HunterWinner: Change Your Life 2023
Men Without Masks
A ground-breaking retreat aimed at rewiring masculinity and nurturing brotherhood
Five days without phones, alcohol or caffeine; of sweat lodges, cold-water swims, lingering hugs and trippy breathwork sessions in the bucolic grounds of Yorkshire’s Broughton Hall. These are the basics of a Men Without Masks UK retreat, overseen by Craig White, an international rugby performance coach turned life coach, who had an Earth-shaking epiphany on a Thai yoga retreat more than a decade ago.
Really, the retreats are about sorting men out: shaking them out of their comfort zones and limiting patterns and into more embodied, authentic selves – while forming a modern version of a tribal-style brotherhood. For all the edge-finding activities our 25-strong group did, including one intensely confrontational anger-release session involving baseball bats, perhaps the most profound part of the retreat was the safe space it provides for talking – for being wide open, vulnerable and real, without any judgement or shame. That, more than anything, explains why some men seemed to float away at the end – transformed, having let their emotional baggage drift off like cumulus clouds over the rolling Yorkshire hills.
Men Without Masks runs five-day retreats from 16 May, 9 September, and 1 December in 2023. Other services include a 10-week online group programme, one-day retreats and a 10-day retreat in Peru, as well as private coaching and mentoring.