I recently moderated a panel on marketing health and wellness to consumers at the New York Spa Alliance. As is often the case at spa industry events, the “pampering vs. wellness” debate popped up. Is pampering an important part of wellness? Or should spas avoid referencing pampering at all cost lest they be perceived as [...]
Jacqueline Samuel is a cuddler. By this I don’t mean that she is a touchy feely kind of person (although she most certainly is that.) I mean she is a professional cuddler. For $60, you can go to her house, slip into bed with her, and . . . snuggle. As you might imagine, [...]
This week, Intelligent Life magazine posted an article on their blog refuting the benefits of spas. Spas often take a bad rap as being a superficial luxury indulgence (“dedicated to narcissism” the Intelligent Life article says.) The article describes spas as “a mish-mash of promises” using a hodge-podge of modern technologies alongside ancient healing remedies [...]
Each year participants at the Global Spa and Wellness Summit are asked to submit some answers to questions about the biggest trends facing the spa and wellness industry. Here were my responses . . . What are the most significant global issues facing us today? 1. Planetary wellbeing: Whether we cause global warming or not, the planet has [...]
In a previous article (see “Innovation Lessons from the Idea Factory,”) I wrote about Jon Gertner’s book about the quest for innovation by Bell Labs. Up until the 1980s, Bell Labs was the research and development wing of AT&T and was a huge driver of modern innovation including the transistor, the laser, digital communications and the [...]
Yesterday was the launch of my new book on The Psychology of Spas & Wellbeing. For those who don’t know, I work in the spa industry and a lot of my research in psychology is driven by trying to understand how we can create holistic wellbeing experiences for guests in a spa setting. In a [...]
My new book on The Psychology of Spas & Wellbeing is now available! It is currently available as an e-book in Kindle or PDF versions but I am also looking into a print version in the future. This book evolved out of my capstone thesis project in the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at [...]
A few weeks ago, I was at the Global Spa and Wellness Summit at the Aspen Institute in Colorado. The theme of the conference was “Innovation through Imagination” and thought leaders from across the spa and wellness industries discussed the future intersection of spas and wellness. It is only natural in industry conferences such as [...]
A great article by Andrea Petersen appeared in the Wall Street Journal Travel section last week outlining the “Hidden Ways Hotels Court Guests Faster.” The article focused on all the ways that different hotel brands are trying to dazzle their guests with an excellent first impression. Hotel industry executives (myself included) were likely to be [...]
Before Twitter, before Facebook, before Google, and before Apple, there was Bell Labs: “From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs—officially, the research and development wing of AT&T—was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital [...]
