SPA TRAVEL GUIDE · THE WORLD’S BEST SPA DAYS
The trip you come home rested from.
Reviews of the best spa days on earth, country by country. Balinese flower-bath massages and Marrakech hammams, Icelandic geothermal lagoons and Budapest’s grand thermal palaces, Turkish baths on the Med and sauna-and-ice rituals under the northern lights. We read the listings so you book the right one.
Worth the airfare
Three spa rituals that belong to one place.
There is a massage table in every city now. But the geothermal lagoons of Iceland, the thousand-year-old hammam in Marrakech, and the riverside flower-bath of Ubud each grew out of one place and feel like nowhere else on earth.
Iceland
The Geothermal Lagoon Ritual
Iceland heats its spas straight from the volcanic ground. You lower into mineral-rich water the colour of milk, steam rising off the surface into cold air, then move through a fixed ritual: a cold plunge, a dry sauna with a wall of glass onto the sea, a salt scrub, a mist room. The Sky Lagoon and the Blue Lagoon do it best, and there is nothing else like easing into hot water outdoors with snow on the hills.
- 1 Sky Lagoon Ticket with 7-Step Ritual and Transfers from Reykjavik
- 2 Silfra: Hot and Cold Snorkeling and Spa Tour – Self Drive
- 3 Small-Group Golden Circle, Hvammsvík Spa with Ticket & Crater
Morocco
The Marrakech Hammam
The ritual has run for a thousand years and barely changed. You sit in rising steam until the heat opens everything up, get scrubbed head to toe with gritty black olive-soap and a kessa mitt, are masked in rhassoul clay, then doused with warm water and left to come slowly back to earth over mint tea. From a tiled neighbourhood bathhouse to a candlelit riad spa, it is the deepest clean of your life.
- 1 Mouassine the real traditional Moroccan Hammam
- 2 Camel Ride, Quad Bike Adventure and Spa Treatment in Marrakech
- 3 Camel Ride and Spa Treatment in Marrakech
Bali
A Balinese Flower-Bath Massage
Bali turned the spa day into an art. In an open pavilion over the Ubud river gorge, a therapist works through a long, firm Balinese massage with warm coconut oil, then you sink into a stone tub strewn with frangipani and hibiscus while the jungle hums around you. Many spas finish with ginger tea and a plate of fruit. It is lavish, green and absurdly good value, and it is the reason people fly here.
- 1 Body Massage Experience in Ubud Traditional Spa
- 2 Ubud: Riverside Spa Treatment near Bali Zoo
- 3 Spa at Flying Bamboo with Dining Included at Botanist
Start here
If you only book one spa day.
The most popular treatment on the whole site, and a safe first booking in a city you are still getting to know.
The classics
The World’s Most Popular Spa Days
Ubud, Budapest, Reykjavik, Marrakech, Istanbul. The baths, massages and lagoon soaks travellers reach for first, in the cities they most want to slow down in.
Where to unwind
Pick a spa tradition.
Bali for flower-bath massages. Morocco for the hammam. Turkey for the marble bathhouse, Iceland for geothermal lagoons, Budapest for grand thermal palaces, Thailand for herbal-compress massage. Each country, with the ritual it does best.
How much time
How long do you want to switch off?
A spare hour is a different booking from a free afternoon. Three ways to unwind, depending on the time you have and how deep you want to go.
Bali & beyond
Bali turned the spa day into an art.
Nowhere does the massage day quite like Indonesia. In the river-gorge pavilions of Ubud, on the sand at Seminyak and Jimbaran, a long firm Balinese massage with warm coconut oil melts into a flower-strewn soak and a plate of fruit. The settings are jungle and ocean, the therapists are unhurried, and the value is almost absurd: this is the country people fly across the world to slow down in.
See the best spas in Indonesia →Morocco
The hammam, a thousand years deep.
In Marrakech and Agadir the bath ritual has barely changed in a thousand years. You sweat in rising steam, get scrubbed head to toe with gritty black olive-soap and a kessa mitt, are wrapped in mineral rhassoul clay, then doused warm and left to drift back over mint tea. From a tiled neighbourhood bathhouse to a candlelit riad, it is the deepest, oldest clean there is.
See the best spas in Morocco →The best part
You always leave lighter than you arrived.
A good spa day is never only the treatment. It is the warmth that finally unclenches your shoulders, the therapist who knows exactly where the knot is, the long quiet afterwards with tea in your hands and nowhere to be. You walk back out into the city slower, looser, and somehow more here than when you went in.
Browse every spa day →Bathing cultures of Asia
Asia has bathed and been kneaded for centuries.
A firm Thai massage and a herbal-compress steam in Bangkok, a Japanese-style onsen circuit of hot and cold pools, a riverside treatment in the hills above Chiang Mai. These are slower, older traditions, less about pampering than about pressure points, hot water and time. A local therapist knows precisely where to lean.
- 1 Bangkok: All-Day Pass to Yunomori Sathorn Onsen Bath and Spa
- 2 Bangkok: W Hotel Pool & Gym Experience
- 3 Bangkok: Yunomori Sukhumvit Onsen Hot Springs Spa Pass
By how long you have
An hour, an afternoon, or the whole day?
Some days you want a quick scrub and a short massage between sights. Some days you want the full bath-house ritual and time to cool down after. And some days you want to drift between thermal pools until dark. Pick the day, we will point you at the spa.
An hour or two
A quick steam and scrub.Into the hammam or the bathhouse for the classic ritual: hot marble, a foam scrub, a short massage, and back out into the day loose-limbed and glowing.
Half a day
The full bath-house ritual.Black soap and clay, a deep scrub, then an oil massage and time to cool down with mint tea. The unhurried half-day that resets a whole trip.
A whole day
Soak from afternoon to dark.A full thermal circuit: warm lagoons and cold plunges, sauna and steam, a slow drift between pools as the light fades. The day you plan a trip around.
The hammam, Turkish style
Turkey has perfected the bath for 500 years.
From the Ottoman domes of Istanbul down the coast to Alanya, Antalya and Side, the Turkish bath runs the same: you warm up on a heated marble slab under a star-pricked dome, get scrubbed with a coarse kese mitt until your skin sings, are buried in mountains of olive-oil foam, then rinsed and rested with tea. A quick reset or the full works, it is the most invigorating hour in the Mediterranean.
See all 31 spas in Turkey →By city
Pick a city and switch off.
Marrakech for the hammam. Ubud for a riverside flower-bath massage. Reykjavik for the geothermal lagoons. Budapest for the grand thermal palaces. Istanbul for an Ottoman bathhouse. Bangkok for Thai massage and herbal steam.
By country
Every country worth a day off.
From the bath-houses of Turkey and Morocco to the massage pavilions of Bali and Thailand, the geothermal lagoons of Iceland and the sauna country of Finland. Browse by where you want to unwind.
Morning to night
A perfect spa day.
Want to give a whole day over to switching off? Here is how it flows, from a morning in the steam to a warm pool as the light goes down.
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