From its early emphasis on healing waters, Europe's rich spa tradition has evolved to incorporate different healing practices and therapies-not just from Europe, but from around the world.Spa Style Europeis a comprehensive guide to the intricate tapestry of popular modern spa treatments in Europe and those quality spas where you can enjoy them. Spa Treatments presents the historical, social and cultural background of spas in Europe, and tells you what you can expect from present-day spa treatments and therapies. Also included in this section are tips on how to benefit most fully from your spa experience, and recipes for do-it-yourself treatments that you can easily try at home. The spa therapies are organized according to the key elements of Water, Fire, Earth, Air, and Harmony. Spa Cuisine brings some of the secrets of healthy eating into your home, with delicious, nutritious and innovative recipes provided by two French spas: La Cuisine Synergique, a three-day programme from Royal Parc Evian; and Cuisine Minceur, a one-day programme from Les Preacute;s d'Eugeacute;nie. You will discover how a synergy of ingredients and cooking methods can provide tasty and inventive meals that help to balance your body and optimize your energy levels. Spa Digest, arranged geographically, is an illustrated guide to 49 of Europe's quality spas. It provides insights into the character of each property and highlights their key treatments to help you plan your next spa visit. A fact-packed Spa Statistics column helps you establish at a glance the spa type, spa size, facilities, treatments and therapies, provisions for couples, availability of spa cuisine, services, recreation options, and contact details of each spa.

The Grand Spas of Central Europe leads readers on an irresistible tour through the grand spa towns of Central Europe—fabled places like Baden-Baden, Bad Ems, Bad Gastein, Karlsbad, and Marienbad. Noted historian David Clay Large follows the grand spa story from Greco-Roman antiquity to the present, focusing especially on the years between the French Revolution and World War II, a period in which the major Central European Kurorte (“cure-towns”) reached their peak of influence and then slipped into decline. Written with verve and affection, the book explores the grand spa towns, which in their prime were an equivalent of today’s major medical centers, rehab retreats, golf resorts, conference complexes, fashion shows, music festivals, and sexual hideaways—all rolled into one. Conventional medicine being quite primitive through most of this era, people went to the spas in hopes of curing everything from cancer to gout. But often as not “curists” also went to play, to be entertained, and to socialize. In their heyday the grand spas were hotbeds of cultural creativity, true meccas of the arts. High-level politics was another grand spa specialty, with statesmen descending on the Kurorte to negotiate treaties, craft alliances, and plan wars. This military scheming was just one aspect of a darker side to the grand spa story, one rife with nationalistic rivalries, ethnic hatred, and racial prejudice. The grand spas, it turns out, were microcosms of changing sociopolitical realities—not at all the “timeless” oases of harmony they often claimed to be. The Grand Spas of Central Europe holds up a gilt-framed but clear-eyed mirror to the ever-changing face of European society—dimples, warts, and all.

A guide to around 50 of the most beautiful and historic spa destinations in Europe, taking in day spas, getaway spas and medical spas. Unlike so many spa guides, this title focuses on destinations with natural spas, where wellness treatments have been a part of the heritage and culture for hundreds of years. From Bath to Budapest, the Spa Lover's Guide examinesthe fascinating history and curative powers of the spa towns, explaining what makes each special and giving detailed information on individual venues and the range of treatments on offer. Feature boxes give essential booking and price information. As well as spa treatments, a range of suggestions for things to do in the local area are given for each historic destination.

Health and Wellness Tourism takes an innovative look at this rapidly growing sector of today’s thriving tourism industry. This book examines the range of motivations that drive this diverse sector of tourists, the products that are being developed to meet their needs and the management implications of these developments. A wide range of international case studies illustrate the multiple aspects of the industry and new and emerging trends including spas, medical wellness, life-coaching, meditation, festivals, pilgrimage and yoga retreats. The authors also evaluate marketing and promotional strategies and assess operational and management issues in the context of health and wellness tourism. This text includes a number of features to reinforce theory for advanced students of hospitality, leisure and tourism and related disciplines.

From the last decades of the nineteenth century through the late 1930s, the West Bohemian spa towns of Carlsbad, Franzensbad, and Marienbad were fashionable destinations for visitors wishing to "take a cure"—to drink the waters, bathe in the mud, be treated by the latest X-ray, light, or gas therapies, or simply enjoy the respite afforded by elegant parks and comfortable lodgings. These were sociable and urbane places, settings for celebrity sightings, match-making, and stylish promenading. Originally the haunt of aristocrats, the spa towns came to be the favored summer resorts for the emerging bourgeoisie. Among the many who traveled there, a very high proportion were Jewish. In Next Year in Marienbad, Mirjam Zadoff writes the social and cultural history of Carlsbad, Franzensbad, and Marienbad as Jewish spaces. Secular and religious Jews from diverse national, cultural, and social backgrounds mingled in idyllic and often apolitical-seeming surroundings. During the season, shops sold Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers, kosher kitchens were opened, and theatrical presentations, concerts, and public readings catered to the Jewish clientele. Yet these same resorts were situated in a region of growing hostile nationalisms, and they were towns that might turn virulently anti-Semitic in the off season. Next Year in Marienbad draws from memoirs and letters, newspapers and maps, novels and postcards to create a compelling and engaging portrait of Jewish presence and cultural production in the years between the fin de siècle and the Second World War.