Accor has opened its first Thalassa Sea & Spa facility in the Middle East at Sofitel Bahrain Zallaq Thalassa Sea & Spa.
The 2000m² wellness complex is the first thalassotherapy facility in the GCC.
Hotel general manager Bert Plas said he was keen to begin educating the region on thalassotherapy’s health benefits and Sofitel’s range of packages and sister spa treatments.
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“The thalssa treatments are based on seawater,” said Plas. “Thalassa needs to be located by the sea, we pump fresh seawater from the sea, we filter this, we heat this up to about 32°C and then we give treatments with that.
“Sea water has been proven to have the same content of minerals that your body needs,” explains Plas. “If you heat up the sea water, it will open the pores of your skin, the skin will absorb the minerals — that’s the reason seaweed is so good for you; it absorbs the minerals of the sea and it’s concentrated.”
Thalassa treatments include Underwater Shower, in which the client lies in a bath-tub filled with sea-water and the hydro-therapist massages the whole body with a jet, and Affusion Sculpture Massage, a relaxing manual massage with a balm of essential oils under a fine shower of tiny drops of sea-water that reproduce the effects of sea spray.
Plas acknowledged that it will take time to educate the market about the new facility, with the hotel’s main guest base coming from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia — countries unfamiliar with the French tradition of thalassotherapy.
“We are the first Thalassa in the Middle East so the concept is not known in the Middle East so this is a slow process, first you have to create awareness, so we are inviting many journalists, PRs [and companies] from the Middle East and they come for a weekend and experience Thalassa — the best thing is to actually see it and experience it,” said Plas.
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