Cities across the world are redefining wellness in an urban vernacular
It’s Monday and gray. Yesterday, a storm bombarded New York, and now I’m playing what my friend calls the city’s favorite game, How Deep Is It? When you step in a puddle at the crosswalk, will it be one inch or 10? I can’t help but feel New York City is dreary.
I emerge from the 51st Street station, and the Waldorf Astoria towers down the street. A doorman directs me up a grand staircase and through Peacock Alley, the hotel’s lobby bar dressed up in gold and cream, a touch of Chinoiserie in the silk wallpaper behind the bar. I pass through, and an art deco muse is carved into the elevator door.
When the doors open onto the Guerlain Spa, I feel I’m entering the cross between a perfumer’s showroom and a marble beehive. The men’s lounge is adorned with oversized Rolex, Tom Ford, and Ferrari coffee table books. Mimi, my massage therapist, leads me into a dark treatment room. I’m here for the Spirit of Achievement massage. She begins at my feet, and the stress of the last few days melts from my body. When I flip over, an aromatherapy ritual wafts citrus and bergamot around me. With my eyes closed, I feel I could be anywhere. After my treatment, I report to the coed lounge. There’s a sauna, an arctic snow cave, and Moroccan hammam, but I’m most drawn to the picture windows. Another spa-goer stands before it with a mug of tea, peering down the avenue, snug in her robe.
Cities Want Their Piece, Too
The global wellness economy has ballooned to a record $6.8 trillion and is forecast to reach $9.8 trillion by 2029. It’s not just exotic locations and off-grid destinations enjoying the spoils.
Dior Spa opened its first United States location in New York City last summer. Guerlain, which opened at the Waldorf Astoria last October and operates in cities around the world, is among the latest in a line of hotel partnerships with beauty and wellness brands to offer bespoke treatments on-site. Scandinavian sauna culture has found an unlikely bedfellow in American cities, and even luxury gyms and yoga studios are catching on. At ID Hot Yoga in Nomad, a cold plunge awaits yogis post hatha flow. The flagship location of Chelsea Piers Fitness includes a contrast therapy area with cold plunges, an infrared sauna, and a hot tub, transforming post workout recovery into an elevated wellness experience overlooking the Hudson River. Cold lavender and eucalyptus towels are de rigueur.
So why this shift toward reimagining urban wellness?
For visitors, hotels can complement their city’s cultural offerings with a moment to unwind in-house. While I was homebound in Brooklyn during the storm, guests at the Waldorf Astoria could spend the day inside the hotel’s spa, cooling down from a sauna session in the relaxation lounge while watching inclement weather pummel Midtown East. For locals, spas and saunas offer a day’s retreat from the pace and pressures of contemporary urban dwelling. Treatments are named to suggest to the busy professional that they can recharge for a finely tuned, fast-paced life. There’s the Boston Energy treatment at the new Raffles Boston, the Spirit of Achievement and Like Clockwork at Waldorf Astoria, the Hypervolt Treatment and Workout Warrior CBD Massage at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Urban Spa-Goers Look Beyond Aesthetic Treatments
Luxury hotels are reimagining how their cities can play host to wellness retreats. In Washington, D.C., Salamander’s dual- level spa is a one-stop shop. With floating sound baths, Gharieni Wave treatment, and a men’s grooming lounge, you can feel the stress of the workday melt off your body and get a fresh cut to show off at work. In Paris, Cheval Blanc is stepping up its offerings to respond to the evolving desires of its sophisticated clientele along the Seine. “Urban guests are no longer seeking merely aesthetic treatments, but a genuine pause for physical and mental regeneration,” says Anne-Louise Pothier, international director of hospitality and spa for Dior Beauty. For serenity within the city, guests want immersive sensory experiences, light therapy, crystal therapy, aromachology. Simultaneously, Pothier has seen an embrace of advanced technology. “Guests increasingly seek instant results,” she says, “with machines becoming an extension of the therapist’s hands.”
While the idea of a wellness retreat may spark images of Hawaiian beaches or yoga hales in Costa Rica, Cheval Blanc made Paris the backdrop of its Haute Motherhood program in December 2025. Catering to postpartum mothers, the program includes a restorative flow postnatal massage for physical recovery that incorporates the four-hand Rebozo ritual. Dioreiki and Pilates are intended to help mothers reconnect with their bodies. The program even provides the opportunity for mothers to learn how to massage their babies from three months old, Pothier says.
Integrating Wellness Rituals to Daily Hustle and Bustle
Similarly, the Ila Only Spa at Lotte New York Palace transforms Midtown Manhattan into the setting for its Blue Zones Retreats. With an emphasis on longevity, which spa manager Joshua Rohoman defines as increasing health and quality of life while looking your best, Ila teaches guests about mindfulness practices while in the city so they can integrate healthier living into the bustle of their lives back home. “During the Blue Zones Retreat, we meet in the courtyard and walk to Central Park to do a wellness activity or a mindful movement class,” Rohoman says. “It takes you through a journey of all the haos being silenced out by the time you get to Central Park, and then appreciating it.
“Instead of trying to say, ‘We can escape here,’ it’s more about appreciation for what you have,” he adds. “When you’re out in Okinawa or the Caribbean, you don’t really have this urbanization to contrast immediately.”
For those who are looking to integrate wellness rituals in a more ongoing, daily way, day spas and saunas are reconstituting the fabric of urban life. You go to the gym, you go out to eat, you go to the sauna.
Sophisticated, Community-Driven Bathhouses
Bathhouse Williamsburg in Brooklyn cut quite the figure when it opened its doors in 2019. Inside a renovated soda factory, it reimagined the city’s historic bathhouses, which played host to many other earthly pleasures, but with a decidedly Goop edge. Guests to the flagship spot in Williamsburg or the sister location in Flatiron can expect multiple thermal pools, saunas, and cold plunges set to different temperatures. Lighting is low or else colorfully evokes 11 p.m. in the backroom of a Brooklyn gay bar.
Down the street, Othership, a Toronto import that opened in Flatiron in 2024, caters to a clientele looking for a more social riff on the sauna experience. Sauna guides drop “snowballs” infused with geranium or patchouli and sage as part of a brief Aufguss. Watching the attendant in a purple sauna bucket hat twirl her towel overhead like an accomplished member of the color guard, I turn to my plus-one and say, “I want to do that.”
A group of friends in Toronto founded Othership during the pandemic with the idea that wellness should be social. They offer immersive theater experiences, comedy, HorsegiirL concerts, socials without alcohol in a “flirt-free facility.”
“The plan for Othership was always to be a space for emotional wellness and connection,” says Robbie Bent, cofounder and CEO. “Part of that means being a place for a truly introspective and meditative experience, but we also wanted people to come and experience a lot of fun with others.
“People are consistently looking to build more healthy habits and communities, and there’s so much space to socialize and connect without alcohol,” he adds. “Spaces like Othership give you somewhere to go that actually helps you feel better, not just escape.” While their events creatively riff on what can be enjoyed while half-naked and drenched in sweat, a free flow at Othership is only 75 minutes, so optimized professionals can enjoy a power lunch schvitz, rinse off, and get back to their desk to review KPIs.
Meanwhile, QC NY takes a more leisurely approach. Guests reach the spa on Governors Island by ferry. My roommate and I board and watch Manhattan vanish in our wake. The city feels remote, and once there we leave it—and contemporary life—behind. Located inside of three renovated McKim, Mead, and White Army barracks buildings, QC harkens back to an older era of New York with vintage prints on the walls and Frank Sinatra’s discography piping through the changing rooms. Myriad steam rooms, saunas, and therapeutic showers notch away inside. Only when you emerge does the city reappear. My roommate and I rest against the edge of one heated pool and watch the cheerful, orange Staten Island Ferry shuttle commuters away from the Seaport. From across the river, in the hold of the crisp air, we find a chance to really breathe.
Finding Your ‘Third Place’
Day spas and saunas create third places— community spots where people can gather beyond home and work—but organized around nourishing body and soul instead of drinking or dining out. Smaller cities are answering the call too. In landlocked Durham, North Carolina, Sauna House opened its doors in 2024 to bring Nordic bathing culture to this creative and politically engaged city. “The gap we saw was a need for more third spaces,” says Jen Richter, Sauna House COO. “We want Sauna House to feel like an opportunity to slow down, take care of yourself, without needing a special occasion. At the end of the day, a bathhouse visit should be restorative, and we think that intention fits the grounded culture of the city.”
Amid a day of meetings around Durham, I squeeze in a visit. Brick white walls soak up sunlight, and I cycle through the sauna and cold plunge. Live plants punctuated the space with greenery. After my last dip inside the long and narrow cold pool, I rest on a bench, the wall behind me heated. Soon, I’ll have to rush back to my meetings, but for now, I can close my eyes and rest somewhere warm.