Jeff Butterworth, spa director, says the services offered at Talise spa are setting a benchmark for spa services.
In a world-first for hotels of its kind, Madinat Jumeirah has introduced an integrated medical centre to its popular Talise spa. Louise Oakley reports from the consultation room
Talise at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai offers something entirely new in the world of wellness. The beautiful spa, already famous for its spacious treatment rooms spread out along winding paths and shaded gardens, has recently added an integrated medical centre and a completely new therapeutic treatment menu to its offering.
This is not only a new launch for Jumeirah Group, but a first for hotels and resorts worldwide, according to spa director Jeff Butterworth, a naturopathic doctor and iridology expert — and the man behind the new-look Talise.
“We’re really first in that genre of the leisure market doing this kind of thing. You’ve got your Canyon Ranches but they’re all dedicated facilities,” says Butterworth.
“What we are trying to explain to people is that Talise is this venue for lifestyle change; it’s wellness, it’s spa, it’s fitness, it’s cuisine — these four key elements. We’re redefining what spa is, it’s still the spa but with the services we offer we’re setting a new benchmark,” says Butterworth.
So while guests can still go to Talise for a massage, they can also avail of a variety of therapies selected from conventional medicine — general practitioner Nancy Nagy Louka is part of the core Talise team — through to alternative medicine, as well as engage in full health assessments and programmes.
Butterworth says the existing Talise was chosen as the site for the integrated medical centre because it is Jumeirah’s flagship spa.
“This is very much a test case for all our new properties and all our new spas will have an element of wellness. Some of the new properties have large facilities, similar to this, and bigger as well, while Frankfurt for example has smaller elements. The whole thing is a model that can be scaled to different locations,” explains Butterworth.
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The physical changes to Talise to add the medical centre were not dramatic, comprising four consultation rooms that, while far more welcoming than a typical doctor’s room, are more functional than design driven.
What was vitally important, however, was the addition of Talise’s onsite blood laboratory.
“We wanted to be very much legitimate and professional in what we do, so the core element to that was obviously the laboratory — we wanted to be able to offer reproduce-able results, be professional in what we do and Jumeirah being Jumeirah, we want to be the best. There’s no other property in the world that has its own blood laboratory on site. There would be very few medical centres in Dubai that have their own lab on site,” asserts Butterworth.
The laboratory is run by technician Marvin Aninang, who performs cutting-edge diagnostics from complete biochemistry analysis to live blood analysis. Traditional markers are observed for accurate diagnosis of disease, but in conjunction with this, Talise health practitioners — including naturopath Jaclyn Harris and homeopath Tania Bardhan — undertake optimal health blood evaluations, which are more predictive than diagnostic.
The advantage of having the laboratory on-site is that results can be turned around very quickly for guests only staying at the hotel for a few days. Indeed, by working as a team, the practitioners can produce lengthy reports and action plans in the time it takes a guest to have a treatment and relax by the pool.
In addition to the various blood tests, Talise offers iridology, a wellness body scan and is adding an ECG as well to enable it to refer guests to cardiologists if necessary.
“The iridology is something very different to the other tools, and that comes from my background as an iridologist so I wanted to bring that here,” says Butterworth. “It’s a simple tool, people really enjoy it because it’s something very personal about themselves. That’s more of a holistic diagnostic tool rather than a conventional tool, so that fitted in.”
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