10 Incredible Wellness Spas and Resorts Around the World

Situated on the banks of Lake Garda, surrounded by lemon-tree groves, the award-winning Lefay Resort and Spa is dedicated to holistic wellness and personalised health programmes. Blending eastern and western medicines and therapeutics, its extensive range of treatments is designed to address everything from insomnia and ageing to posture and toxins. By checkout time, you’ll feel brand new.

Within the Jewel Grande’s gargantuan 30,000sqft (2,800sqm) spa, you’ll find the Caribbean’s only Himalayan salt room – a relaxing space washed with a sunset-like glow that’s reputed to aid skin conditions, provide relief from respiratory issues and promote healing. If that’s not intriguing enough, book a session in the Signature Quartz Therapy Ritual Room, which uses amplified frequencies transmitted through quartz beads to help balance energy in the body.

When you arrive at Grand Velas Riviera Nayarit, you’re greeted by a calming personal spa concierge, who provides a thorough breakdown of the resort’s vast health offerings. Check in to one of its extra-fancy wellness suites and enjoy an in-room exercise kit to rival your gym – think dumbbells, a yoga mat, resistance bands and a Technogym exercise bike. Also included are a personal training session and a massage for each guest, an elaborate menu of waters (from coconut to alkaline), an aromatherapy kit, organic skincare products and an LED lamp with a clock timer to help reset your circadian rhythm.

Billed as a residential health retreat, Como Shambhala aims to help guests make a permanent lifestyle shift that lasts beyond their stay. In a lush jungle just outside Ubud (itself a wellness hotspot), the resort’s setting sets the scene for guided hikes, whitewater rafting and outdoor workouts. If you want something more intensive and tailored to you, the Be Active, Cleanse, Ayurvedic or Bespoke wellness programmes, all led by in-house experts, will make over your body and mind.

Ojo Santa Fe (formerly Sunrise Springs Spa Resort) is not your mother’s spa. This Santa Fe resort boasts an on-site spiritual guide, a hypnotherapist and animal-guide communicator, horticulture classes, CBD massages, integrative-medicine counselling and even a Puppy Patch (playing and caring for puppies from a local shelter). If a week spent indulging your curiosity around all things woo-woo sounds appealing, this is the resort for you.

Your blood pressure instantly drops when you check in to Amangiri, a luxurious spa resort that wraps itself seamlessly around southern Utah’s apricot rocks. Spend quiet days at the spa working toward hózhó – which translates as harmony, health, beauty and balance in Navajo – and evenings stargazing. If your stay fortuitously coincides with the full moon, you can even partake in the resort’s outdoor moonlit yoga class beneath the mesa’s dramatic silhouette.

Many people visit the Western Cape for its vineyards, but you’re more likely to be undertaking a detox program when you stay at the region’s Santé Wellness Retreat and Spa. This wellness sanctuary uses “high-tech and high-touch” modalities for an all-encompassing approach to healing. You could take a yoga class, followed by a visit to the Health Optimizing Clinic to dig into the science of your health, and then check into the Bio-Energy Centre to rebalance your vibes using electromagnetic waves, chromotherapy and crystals.

Out of the Blue, Capsis Elite Resort sits near the seaside village of Agia Pelagia and Heraklion on the northeast coast of Crete. This five-star wellness destination offers holistic treatments, therapies, yoga programmes, detox courses, fitness and more. A few days of pampering here will relieve any stress and physical tension you’re ready to offload.

This fabulous spa hotel in pretty Salcombe, on the Devon coast in England, has a hydrotherapy pool, steam room, sauna and the signature HarSPA Marine, Mind & Body, which includes a foot soak, a full-body brush, body massage, a facial and a scalp massage. The Salcombe Harbour Hotel is also a perfect base to enjoy the great outdoors – whether that’s kayaking in the sea, or hiking along Devon’s dramatic coastline.

Nowhere does medieval chateaux quite like Germany, and this one has evolved to become a spa resort on the country’s north coastline, in the resort town of Wangels overlooking the Baltic Sea. Whether it’s time out alone, as a couple or a family, this 17th-century property has everything needed to guarantee a relaxing break you’ll never forget. There are 10 treatment rooms in the 21,528sqft (2,000sqm) spa, along with a hammam, a heated indoor-outdoor pool, a cold-water pool and an outdoor saltwater whirlpool. Even by German standards, that’s quite something.