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Spa: A Comprehensive Introduction | Chapter 10.1 | Management: Building Blocks for Leaders

August 3, 2020

While a professional can become a manager on the virtue of what he or she accomplishes, being a leader is in part determined by others and their willingness and acceptance of the professional’s leadership. Whether others accept the leadership of a professional will depend in large part on how they manage and, even more importantly, how they behave and believe.

Spa: A Comprehensive Introduction | Chapter 10.2 | The Importance of Leadership

August 3, 2020

To manage means to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of, responsibility for, to conduct. Leading is influencing, guiding in direction, course, action, and opinion. The distinction is crucial.

Spa: A Comprehensive Introduction | Chapter 10.3 | Good to Great

August 3, 2020

In Good to Great, Jim Collins sets forth a model for leadership that many spa professionals feel makes sense for the culture in which they operate. Collins studied great companies with an eye to discovering what made them great. Specifically, he looked for those companies that started out as merely good and became great.

Spa: A Comprehensive Introduction | Chapter 10.4 | The Eighth Habit

August 3, 2020

Stephen R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, followed up his highly successful book in 2004 with The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness.

Spa: A Comprehensive Introduction | Chapter 10.5 | Spa Leadership

August 3, 2020

Spa professionals frequently talk about how leadership in a spa is different than in other operations because of the types of people that look to the spa manager for leadership. Spa professionals must have the heart of a service provider and model how they want employees to treat guests.

Spa: A Comprehensive Introduction | Chapter 10.6 | Spa Ethics

August 3, 2020

Being ethical involves more than just obeying laws and regulations. Being ethical means having moral principles that guide one’s behavior.

Spa: A Comprehensive Introduction | Chapter 10.7 | Finding Success

August 3, 2020

Leaders help to cultivate the heart and soul of a spa. They are the humble, determined drivers who can steer a spa to greatness while uplifting the spirit of employees and guests. It is a role that is a sacred trust for the dual tasks of ensuring a spa’s success while creating serenity and renewing the hearts, minds, bodies, and souls of all who enter its doors.

Spa: A Comprehensive Introduction | Chapter 2.1 | The Origin of Spa – Water

December 19, 2016

A History of Spa and Spa Cultures

Much of the content of this chapter was provided by spa historian Jonathan Paul de Vierville, Ph.D., LCSW-ACP, LPC, TRMT, professor of history and humanities, St. Philips College, San Antonio, Texas; director of the Alamo Plaza Spa at the Menger Hotel; and founder of the Hot Wells Institute. The authors gratefully acknowledge his expertise and insight.


While many people may think of spas as a modern development of the Western world, the essentials of spa have their roots in human history as far back as the beginning of time. People have always sought out the places where water springs from the earth in order to experience water’s healing properties and restorative qualities. Other aspects of spa, in particular the human touch of massage and the use of natural ingredients like mud, seaweed, herbs, and plant oils, have also been used in many civilizations over the centuries. By studying the roots of spa cultures and traditions throughout history, spa professionals can better understand and appreciate the richness of the modern spa environment in which they live and work.

This chapter explores the origins of spa and spa practices from antiquity through the middle of the twentieth century, which many spa historians identify as the beginning of the modern, or contemporary, spa era.         

Spa: A Comprehensive Introduction | Chapter 2.2 | The First Civilizations

December 19, 2016

The First Civilizations

Along with nomadic Stone Age and Bronze Age societies, the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Crete, and China all used water for religious rituals as well as individual and social healing rites. The earliest written sources of history include accounts of the sick using purification baths in healing waters along with drinking from medicinal fountains. Within ancient springs, wells, and stone bath works, archeologists have found votive tablets and sculptures along with an abundance of artifacts that evidence wide use of the waters for health, regenerative, curative, and therapeutic practices. With all this evidence, scholars have gained an impression of ancient spa cultures and their different types, forms, and methods of purification baths and ritual bathing.

Spa: A Comprehensive Introduction | Chapter 2.3 | Western Civilizations and Spa Cultures

December 19, 2016

Western Civilizations and Spa Cultures

The spa cultures of Greece and Rome during classical antiquity and the development of hot and cold bathing and water-based therapies throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance form the foundation of many spa practices of today.

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