Changes to hotels in Monaco are like a facelift: inevitable, technically optional, but revealed with a certain splash of confidence. The latest to undergo its transformation is the Métropole, which last year unveiled a sweeping renovation that has brought the already decadent property into a new era of opulence. Its new spa is a showstopper, too. Designed by Samy Irani, the space leans into minimalism and a hushed palette of quiet luxury—which in these parts is actually quite revolutionary. It’s the hottest spa appointment to book in the Principality, especially if you’re keen on facials of the anti-aging variety.

The treatment to book: You’ll want to book anything that involves Longeviskin, the proprietary, high-tech anti-aging device developed by Guerlain—it combines LED therapy, micro currents, micro peels, ultrasound, cryotherapy and radiotherapy into one impressive system.

LA SPA Sisley Paris at ROMEO Roma

A spa built around a glass-bottom pool suspended over archaeological remains, turning each swim into a quite literal float through history? Color us intrigued. ROMEO Roma takes that cinematic premise and has built an entire concept around it: a 15,000 square feet of a spa in partnership with Sisley Paris, which feels less like a hotel spa and more like a literal temple to wellness. The experience is anchored in the botanical philosophy of Sisley Paris, with essential oils driving every treatment.

The treatment to book: A Sisley Phyto-Aromatic massage, followed by a slow return to that suspended pool area. You’ll be feeling like Roman royalty in no time.

What distinguishes Six Senses from the crowded field of London hotel spas is its focus on appealing to visitors and Londoners alike. Designed by AvroKO with EPR Architects, this cavernous subterranean space features all the bells and whistles that modern wellness aficionados crave: contrast therapy, infrared saunas, red light therapy, compression boots, electro stimulators and more—all of which is calibrated into personalized protocols such as sleep, detoxification or performance. A partnership with HUM2N Longevity Clinic has brought medical-grade diagnostics and advanced biomarker testing to elevate this from mere hotel spa into bona fide biohacking.

The treatment to book: There is a robust treatment menu to peruse, but the 30-minute “Tension Soother” back, neck and shoulder massage feels particularly apropos for busy Londoners.

Perched in the hills above Florence, Collegio Alla Querce’s Aelia spa trades the usual grand hotel wellness theatrics for something more quiet and personal. There are no communal locker rooms or jumbo-sized thermal circuits here—guests are ushered from a garden-facing lounge into one of just four treatment rooms, including two spa suites with soaking tubs and steam showers. The experience is highly personalized, with bespoke treatments powered by Furtuna Skin, a Sicilian line created from organic olive oil and wild-foraged botanicals.

The treatment to book: Check out the “Olive Oil & Tuscan Lemon,” an invigorating full-body exfoliation with warm olive oil, Tuscan lemons and foraged herbs.

This newcomer brings a soupçon of French glamour to the Italian Riviera. This is the country’s first permanent Dior Spa, and leans into that languid, distinctly Portofino sense of luxury with indoor-outdoor treatment rooms, a rooftop relaxation terrace, and views of the sea that would make Fellini weep. The menu emphasizes things like sculpting massages, lymphatic therapies, and facial therapies that will leave you looking as glowy and sculpted as a couture gown.

Lake Constance in Germany glitters with bands of gray, silver, and ice blue. A blackbird chatters noisily and I catch the scent of magnolia. For once I’m not worrying about anything. I’m not distracting myself with my phone or a book or a bar of candy. I’m halfway through a 21-day fast at Buchinger Wilhelmi—the spiritual and scientific birthplace of modern fasting—and my preconceptions have all been blown out of the water. For years I’d thought Buchinger was “just a weight-loss place,” that it simply offered an extension of the intermittent fasting craze that has swept the wellness world. I expected to be bored, maybe a little lonely, and very hungry. What I hadn’t expected was a deep inner recalibration, tantamount to a spring clean of the soul.

The clinic was founded in the 1950s by Otto Buchinger, a naval doctor who learn about fasting in India and was said to have been cured of severe rheumatoid arthritis following a 19-day water fast. He dedicated his life to fasting and yet, right from the start, it was about more than the physical effects of abstinence.

“When a person fasts, they are in a state of maximum receptiveness that can bring about profound and comprehensive change,” he claimed. Buchinger himself was an avowed yet non-dogmatic Christian who integrated a plethora of spiritual and cultural influences into his model of therapeutic fasting. His “nine elements of soul nourishment” included “meditation and adoration,” spending time in nature, reading spiritual literature, surrounding oneself with good companions, using music, art, and movement to nourish body and soul; and valuing a “God-given” sense of humor and self-deprecation.

This spiritual, emotional, and physical reset is a million miles away from the hormone pummeling of current weight-loss drugs, and the aughts’ detox ethos. Its origins lie in ancient Greek philosophy and Ayurvedic purification; it is woven through Christian, Islamic, Sufi, and Buddhist traditions. Fasting was never intended as a pound shredder: it was seen as a pathway to clarity, renewal, and self-mastery. Nowadays at Buchinger, it’s about shifting from symptom blasting to a nuanced understanding of how our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs affect our bodies. 

“More and more guests come to us for the spiritual dimension,” says Leonard Wilhelmi, Otto’s great-grandson who now heads the business side of the operation. “Everything becomes clearer when you fast. We see a transformation after five days or so.” His cousin, Dr. Verena Buchinger, is the medical director: “Guests frequently have epiphanies; some claim it’s a spiritual reset,” she agrees.

According to a recent tourism initiative, Sweden is “the first country in the world prescribed by doctors.” In the cheeky marketing campaign, Sweden expands on how its saunas, nature, and 100 days of summer sunlight (rebranded as “24/7 light therapy”) support mental wellbeing. The initiative’s website even features MDs endorsing the program, stating that it provides “evidence-based ways” to support mental health. There is even a downloadable “prescription” form for doctors to “suggest personalized Swedish experiences” based on patients’ needs.

It’s no surprise that Sweden is using this tactic to increase tourism: Global wellness tourism has skyrocketed in recent years, while mental health treatment is one of the fastest-growing industries worldwide. Promoting a combination of the two is a logical next step. But does traveling for your mental health actually work—or is it simply another trend cashing in on the burnout epidemic?

“Travel is no longer just about getting away,” says Sheri Colosimo, wellness educator and co-founder of Más Bliss Retreats. “It’s an opportunity to consider how you want to feel, what you truly need physically, mentally, and emotionally, and what type of experience can support that.” This concept differs from traditional wellness tourism. Studies characterize the distinction as “hedonic” versus “eudaimonic” travel, the former being centered on immediate enjoyment, the latter on personal growth (traditional wellness offerings like massages fall into the hedonic category). While travel has indeed been proven to improve happiness, these effects are often short-lived, fading soon after returning to work or within weeks of coming home.

An outdoor ceremony space at Paraiso de la Bonita resort in Mexico’s Riviera Maya, where the writer took part in a temazcal.

Rafael Luhrs/Paraiso de la Bonita

So can the industry actually provide experiences that improve mental health? While I haven’t yet gotten my health insurance to fund a trip to Sweden, I have recently been to Mexico several times, each for a program marketed as improving mental well-being. The first was a yoga retreat with Beyond Yoga, set in the lush hills of Puerto Vallarta; the second, a sleep therapy program at the Ritz-Carlton’s sweeping Zadún Los Cabos; and the third, a weekend at the romantic Paraiso de la Bonita to experience offerings like their temazcal, a traditional sweat lodge ceremony for spiritual purification. I usually get the most out of therapy-like experiences, and the least out of athletic and meditative ones. It came as a surprise, then, that the yoga retreat had the greatest impact on my long-term mental health. I turned to an expert for some insight as to why.

“Travel is a great opportunity for cognitive enhancement,” says Dr. Karen Miller, PhD, a leading expert in brain wellness. “And that’s probably the key to thinking about how to achieve long-term effects. It requires us to engage with our frontal lobes much more than usual.” She explains that the novelty inherent to travel—like navigating new environments, foods, and transportation—is one of the most helpful factors. “Something new makes much more of an impact on how our brain is wired,” she says. Miller also points to the “dual tasking” or cognitive activity while in motion (like reading a map while walking) common with travel as an extremely effective way to improve mind function. This enhanced cognition is what leads to the clarity, new habits, and emotional processing that have lasting effects on our mental health.

I came to SHA because my matrescence had been the culmination of three long years of IVF—so much more than the usual nine months of hormonal, emotional, and physical changes of a pregnancy. Not only had I been subjected to thousands of needles and gallons of medications, but this roller coaster unfolded during my 40s, leaving my mind and body constantly at odds with each other. Disrupted sleep? Patchy skin? Absconding period? Unexplained anxiety? All elements of a not-so-fun game I call “Postpartum or Perimenopause?”

How do you address something you don’t fully understand? The numbers are a good place to start. “I think you’re really tired,” said Dr. Gabriela Dueñas during my functional medicine assessment. Ordinarily that’s a laughable observation to make to the mother of a newborn, but Dr. Dueñas came armed with data. Numbers and stats projected onto the wall supported her thesis: My progesterone was low, my cortisol was high, my physical stress was through the roof, but my mental stress was, mercifully, quite balanced—likely due to my saint of a husband managing as many external factors as he could. “You have to start learning how to release and relax and reconnect,” she continued. Doctor’s orders.

The regimen she prescribed included facials and massages and time at a subterranean hydrotherapy circuit overlooking the mangroves, but also an EKG, physiotherapy, and a gynecological exam—all firsts for me at a wellness retreat. Running up and down the six-story clinic between sessions was like being back in school again, only I’d swapped calculus and French for ginger therapeutic compresses, intermittent hypoxia, IV ozone therapy, and Pranayama. It was a more rigorous course load than I’d expected from a relaxing spa getaway, but I was here to do the work, after all.

As the pool hoist lowered me into the water, I noticed how it bubbled up from thousands of feet underground. These thermal baths in Palm Springs, stewarded by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians for more than five millennia and long considered a portal to the spiritual underworld and a place of healing, welcomed my paralyzed body. I began to float weightlessly as the surrounding San Jacinto Mountains turned pink in the evening desert light. I felt the strangest sensation of being received by something both ancient and entirely new.

I was in the California desert landscape of Palm Springs in search of wellness—an experience that, more often than not, evades people like me. Around the world, spas are often physically inaccessible, retreats off-limits by design, and practitioners limited in their ability and training to see disabled bodies as deserving of the restoration everyone so desperately needs.

The city lies roughly 130 miles east of Los Angeles, a distance that by any American metric is barely a blip on the map. It is easily reached by a highway that cuts cleanly through the Sonoran Desert, past wind turbines spinning in their hundreds. Arriving in the Coachella Valley, with its impossibly blue skies and neighboring Joshua Tree wilderness, one’s sense of scale and perspective soon recalibrates; a prerequisite, perhaps, for experiencing a city that has long served as refuge.

A view from the Museum Trail above Palm Springs

Daniel Seung Lee

From the 1930s, when Hollywood stars fled here to escape studio contracts that controlled their public images, finding sanctuary in midcentury modern villas hidden behind bougainvillea; to today, where the LGBTQ+ community has built a haven when few other places offered acceptance: Palm Springs has always known how to welcome the marginalized. Over a third of its residents now identify as queer. The question I had was whether that welcome extended to disabled travelers too.

“For families like mine, travel has always meant planning around what might go wrong,” Josh Heinz, a local father of a son with autism, tells me over coffee one morning. “I wanted to flip that—to make sure people traveling to Palm Springs can plan around what might go right for once.”

As well as being an invested parent, Heinz is also the community engagement manager for Visit Greater Palm Springs. Last spring, he spearheaded an initiative that led to Greater Palm Springs becoming the first destination in Southern California, and only the fifth worldwide, to achieve Certified Autism Destination status. Hotels, restaurants, and attractions across the valley have now completed specialized training to accommodate guests with sensory sensitivities: learning, for example, that a meltdown is not a tantrum, that fluorescent lighting can overwhelm, or that sometimes a quiet corner matters more than a view.

Bangkok, Thailand
Weaving Thai medicine with Indian and Chinese wisdom into a tech-forward package

Hidden in Bangkok’s leafy Bang Kachao district—the city’s green lung, criss-crossed by canals and mangroves—RAKxa is the kind of wellness retreat that redefines what rest actually feels like. I’m here for its new Energy Renewal Programme, a five- or seven-night retreat to restore energy levels, rebalance hormones, and regulate the nervous system—all of which I’m very much in need of. Part of it involves medical diagnostics that scan for any obvious issues, but it is the traditional Thai medicine that really resonates. This holistic healing system is based on balancing the body’s four elements—earth, water, wind, and fire—with a strong focus on gut health, Thai herbal ingredients, and rituals that connect the physical and emotional. The practitioners themselves are exceptional: intuitive, compassionate, and deeply skilled.

Every treatment feels ceremonial, whether it’s an Ayurvedic marma massage targeting healing points on the body or sand therapy, a form of play and art therapy that I rave about to friends back home. After each treatment, I feel a small shift in my burnout, be it physical or mental relief. The food is another highlight: bright, flavorful Thai dishes—light curries brimming with herbs—reimagined for health but never stripped of joy. The onsen eggs at breakfast are a favorite. As somebody who struggles with any sort of detox food, I find it medicinal, flavorful, and indulgent at once. What surprises me most, though, is the long stretches of deliberate nothingness built into the program. At first, it feels uncomfortable to sit in stillness with little to do, but over time, that discomfort becomes quietly radical. It’s in those moments of enforced pause that real restoration begins. I spend time in the serene hydrotherapy area and in the sleek fitness facilities, and trainers tailor movement sessions to complement my treatments. By the end of my stay, I am not only calmer and more energized but also more integrated, as though my body and mind have finally been reintroduced to one another. Punishing detoxes or performative wellness aren’t the mandate here; it’s about restorative stillness, the kind that lingers long after you leave. —Anita Bhagwandas

Northern cool is getting hotter with the launch of Laugarás Lagoon on Iceland’s Hvítá River (not one but two levels of geothermal bathing), and Hagastrand Spa in Stockholm (self-playing gong installations and an event sauna for storytelling rituals). Van Oys Maastricht Retreat in the Netherlands completes its rebirth with Oysana spa. The castle’s boons are its 13th-century origins, mist-shrouded woods and a private spring. Set in a former stable, Oysana leans into this with a SlowSync ethos centered around harmony with nature.

Meanwhile on the other end of the thermometer, Four Seasons Resort and Residences Amaala at Triple Bay in Saudi Arabia lights up with desert fire rituals, stargazing, and a collaboration with celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak. Clinique La Prairie expands its holistic longevity ethos with two new resorts—one also in Amaala, the other in Phuket, Thailand. Mailena Wellness Resort, on the Baja California shoreline, awakens wellness on Mexico’s west coast with its state-of-the-art Wellness and Longevity Center. The beach mood continues at Pical Resort in Istria, which is home to Espa’s first signature spa in Croatia.

Offshore, island energy is making waves. Ūrjā opens at Four Seasons Resort Maldives at Kuda Huraa, billing itself as a “naturopathy island” majoring in stillness and the body’s innate power to heal. On Malta, adults-only Verdala Wellness Hotel is the country’s first integrated wellness resort, with gourmet anti-inflammatory dining and seasonal retreats. Small but mighty Eha, on Estonia’s Hiiumaa island, part of a Unesco biosphere, has at its heart dawn mist walks, wild herb foraging, and Baltic ancestral healing.

There’s a yoga studio at Eha, set on Estonia’s Hiiumaa island, part of a UNESCO biosphere.

Eha

Finally, Deepak Chopra’s much-anticipated Ameyalli Wellbeing Center, set around hot springs in Utah, is gearing up for its big reveal in 2027. The latest tech nudges up alongside ancient healing and spiritual spring cleaning—Chopra is known for his manifestation workshops, personal mantra chanting, and quantum healing.

This article was originally published on Condé Nast Traveller UK.

As I listened to the pitter-patter of afternoon jungle rain and admired the lush, expansive greenery that extended far past the horizon, I was struck by the realization that I hadn’t felt this calm in a very long time. I’m not much of a nature person—I’ve called New York City home for a decade and primarily opt for metropolitan vacations—but I was holed up at Hacienda Altagracia, Auberge Collection, a wellness resort in the foothills of Costa Rica, in the hopes that it might reset my nervous system and help me redefine the grief that had been weighing on me for months. And it was working.

Mortality isn’t something the average 20-something should be thinking much about. However, 2025 changed that for me. It was a difficult year to say the least: I lost my aunt after a fierce battle with cancer, my grandmother deteriorated shortly after, and my family’s beloved cat passed unexpectedly right before the holidays. These back-to-back deaths left an indelible mark on me, and forced me to reckon with my own impermanence. While still young and healthy, being faced with the reality that we all have an expiration date made me subconsciously retreat into myself, and I had been feeling myself lose my lease on life. So when I was given the opportunity in late December to visit Hacienda Altagracia and its world-renowned Casa de Agua spa, home of the first Estée Lauder Skin Longevity Clinic in the Americas, I jumped at it, hoping to reemerge from my rut—and look the concept of aging straight in the face.

Longevity has become a hot topic in the wellness world, and it goes far beyond taking your vitamins and staying active. Many diehard longevity seekers are going so far as to plan their travel around the world’s blue zones—five regions across the globe that are known for high numbers of centenarians. Research has shown that these areas share four key pillars that lead to longer lives: healthy diets, strong social ties, positive purpose, and active lifestyles.

The Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica is the only blue zone in Central America, and Hacienda Altagracia lies just a few hours south, in Perez Zeledon. The vast 180-acre Auberge property—which was modeled around the four blue zone pillars—is nestled amongst the dense flora and fauna of the rugged Talamanca Mountains. Well-being is at the core of the 50-casita resort, which has curated a robust spa program, organic dining experiences, and holistic nature activities that aim to keep visitors revitalized long after they leave.

When I arrived at the property midday on a Friday, I was feeling emotionally and physically depleted after a long, intense work week and an early morning flight. After check-in and a quick tour of the mountainous property, I spent my first afternoon alone in my expansive casita. Stepping into the one-bedroom accommodations—with a stocked coffee bar, sitting room and functioning fireplace, expansive dressing area, and stunning bathroom with sand-colored marble counters and a rain shower—transported me to my own private sanctuary. It took everything in me not to immediately melt into the fluffy king-sized canopy bed. In an effort to stay awake, I looked toward the sun—which wasn’t hard to find, thanks to the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked my private patio with far-reaching views of the rainforest.

I took a dip in my private heated plunge pool and could feel my muscles ease as I sank into the water; catching a glimpse of the vibrant purple flowers (my favorite) that lined the pool wall was a sign that I was exactly where I needed to be.